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Kenyan textiles merchants have reacted angrily to a proposed EU ban on second-hand garments exports following the primary discussions at an EU atmosphere ministers assembly in Brussels earlier this week.
Denmark, Sweden and France are proposing that the EU apply the Basel Conference to used garments, banning exports of hazardous textile waste and requiring prior knowledgeable consent to be obtained earlier than importing textile waste.
“The export of textile waste from the EU to creating nations causes important environmental, social, and well being issues. The EU has to place an finish to this follow,” Denmark’s deputy everlasting consultant to the EU, Soren Jacobsen, instructed the Atmosphere Council assembly on Monday (25 March).
Many economists contend that second-hand clothes is a barrier to African industrialisation and provide chain growth in textiles, arguments which led the eight-nation East African Neighborhood to comply with ban second-hand clothes imports in 2016, though the plan was later deserted.
Nevertheless, 1000’s of companies throughout the continent make a livelihood from the market.
“No one is giving us trash by pressure. What we’re shopping for is nice high quality garments, and if a provider needs to promote us trash, we might be joyful to refuse their consignment,” mentioned Teresia Wairimu Njenga, who chairs the Mitumba Consortium Affiliation of Kenya.
The trade is conscious that an export ban would pose an existential risk to its future.
Final yr, the Mitumba affiliation commissioned analysis which claimed that the second-hand clothes commerce in Kenya supplies two million inexperienced jobs and helps 20 million livelihoods.
Wairimu Njenga has beforehand complained of “wildly inaccurate misinformation circulating in Western media concerning the second-hand garments commerce”, including that this had created a “false prevailing narrative that has demonised our commerce and put thousands and thousands of jobs and livelihoods in danger on the false altar of defending the atmosphere.
“Slightly than being a risk to the atmosphere, second-hand garments are an important pillar in world endeavours in direction of reuse, a round financial system and sustainability within the textile sector,” she added.
The French atmosphere ministry is main the marketing campaign for a ban after French lawmakers accredited a brand new legislation that may step by step impose fines of as much as €10-per-item of clothes by 2030, as nicely for a ban on promoting for such merchandise. Europe presently dumps 90 p.c of its used garments in Africa and Asia.
Kenya imported 177,386 tonnes of used clothes in 2022, a 76 p.c improve on the quantity imported in 2013, in accordance with the United Nations commerce information. Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa are different main markets for used clothes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa imports $1bn [€0.93bn] a yr of second-hand garments, accounting for 30 p.c of the worldwide market.
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