A few years ago, many countries began banning imports of plastic waste. The shift was largely triggered by China.

For decades, China had been one of the world’s biggest destinations for recyclable waste, receiving huge volumes of plastic and other scrap materials from countries around the world. But as contamination increased and recycling facilities became overwhelmed, the government introduced its “National Sword” policy. China announced the restrictions in 2017, and by 2018, it had banned the import of 24 categories of solid waste, including certain low-grade plastics and mixed recyclables.

This created a domino effect. As China closed its doors, many Global North countries began redirecting their waste exports to other destinations, particularly in Southeast Asia. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines started receiving more waste shipments, often without the infrastructure to safely manage the volume and contamination levels. By early 2019, several Southeast Asian countries had also started rejecting, returning, or tightening rules around imported waste.

Indonesia has since moved further in this direction. In 2024, the Indonesian government announced plans to end plastic waste imports starting in 2025, with the Minister of Environment stating that the country had “had enough” while still struggling to manage its own domestic plastic waste.

At the international level, the Basel Convention Plastic Waste Amendments added another layer of control. Under these rules, many types of plastic waste can no longer be freely shipped across borders. Instead, they are subject to a process known as Prior Informed Consent, meaning the importing country must be notified and agree before the shipment can proceed. The aim is to stop countries from quietly exporting difficult-to-recycle plastic waste to places that may not have the capacity to manage it safely.

So naturally, people began talking about the end of global waste dumping.

However, have countries really stopped importing plastic waste?

One of the most overlooked routes that indirectly create plastic waste is clothing. More specifically, we’re talking about secondhand clothing bales, known in Indonesia as ‘balpres’ or in African countries as ‘Bhero’. These are compressed bundles of used clothes, often imported in bulk and sold through thrift markets. On paper, they are not labelled as plastic waste but as used clothes.

But clothing is not made from cotton, linen, or other natural fibres alone. A huge share of global fashion uses synthetic fibres such as polyester, nylon, acrylic, and elastane. In 2024, polyester made up 59% of total global fibre production. UNEP has found that 11% of plastic waste comes from clothing and textiles.

This begs the question: when a bale of secondhand clothing is full of low-quality synthetic garments that cannot be resold, repaired, or recycled, what real value is there? Can they still be reused? Or is it plastic-based textile waste arriving under a different name?

Is Secondhand Clothing Bad?

To be clear, secondhand clothing is not the enemy.

Reuse and a good secondhand programme are some of the best ways to extend the life of clothing, reduce demand for new production, and (ideally) make fashion more affordable. In principle, secondhand is part of the solution.

The problem starts when the system is used to move low-value, low-quality clothing from countries that overproduce and overconsume to countries that are left to sort, sell, dump, burn, or otherwise manage what cannot be used.

And those volumes are not small.

Between 2000 and 2015, clothing production doubled while the average time garments were used fell by 36%.  Global textile waste is estimated at around 92 million tonnes per year.

This is where the secondhand system becomes complicated. If garments are in good condition, they can still be used. If they are damaged, stained, or simply unsuitable for the local climate they just become a burden to the importing country.

What happens when a country imports secondhand clothing?

Ghana's Kantamanto Market is one of the world’s most famous secondhand clothing hubs. It supports thousands of livelihoods and keeps a huge amount of clothing in circulation. But The Or Foundation exposed the millions of garments leaving the market each week as waste, with many burned, dumped, washed into the sea, or embedded in beaches and the seafloor. Their research reveals how traders often buy bales without being able to check the quality of the clothes inside first, only to discover that many pieces are destroyed and of too low value to resell.

In Kenya, the ‘mitumba’ trade supports livelihoods and provides locals with affordable clothing. But the waste issue is significant. Le Monde found that the country receives large volumes of secondhand clothing, of which 40% actually becomes non-reusable waste because of poor quality, condition, sizing, or unsuitability.

In Chile, discarded clothing is strongly associated with illegal dumping in the Atacama Desert. Approximately 60,000 tonnes of secondhand clothes enter Chile each year, with an estimated 39,000 tonnes illegally dumped. It is one of the clearest visual examples of how the global secondhand trade can become a waste-management crisis.

Indonesia is also dealing with the issue. Imported used clothing is prohibited under HS 6309.00.00 of Indonesia’s trade rules.  The ban is intended to protect health, safety, and domestic interests but enforcement cases show the trade has not disappeared. In June 2026, Indonesian customs seized 43 containers of illegal used clothing imports.

How secondhand imports create waste and other environmental effects?

When secondhand items are still good, they’re reusable and therefore valuable. But when the system is flooded with cheap, low-quality, synthetics, a new waste stream is created. Traders take the financial risk. Local communities take the environmental risk. Waste workers take the health risk. And local governments are left with hard-to-recycle materials.

On top of that, synthetic garments shed microfibres when they are worn, washed, dumped, or degraded. Around 9% of annual microplastic losses to the ocean come from clothes and other textiles. When synthetic clothing is burned, it can worsen air pollution and health risks, especially where open burning is used and formal waste-management systems are limited.

This is why we need to be careful with the way we talk about thrifting.

Buying secondhand can be a great thing. But buying secondhand like a fast-fashion haul is still overconsumption. When something is cheap, we tend to buy more of it. If we buy more than we need, we use less of what we own. And if we barely use it, even a secondhand item quickly becomes waste.

So, how can we consume in a way that’s actually sustainable?

First, we need to protect secondhand. Effective secondhand systems should prioritise quality, transparency, and local circulation where possible. In Indonesia, Rekynd collects unused clothes locally, sorts them, and then finds them the right next life through donation, resale, or recycling.

Second, buying intentionally needs to become the norm. Buying one item that you will wear repeatedly is better than buying ten pieces that stay in the closet. Repairing, tailoring, swapping, renting, and reselling are all stronger options than treating thrift as another trendy behaviour.

Third, brands need to be held responsible for what they produce. That means designing clothes that last longer, reducing unnecessary synthetic blends, supporting repair and take-back systems, and funding end-of-life solutions in the places where their products actually end up.

Finally, we need to expand how we think about plastic pollution. Plastic is not only bottles, bags, and packaging. It is also in our wardrobes. When synthetic textiles leak into rivers, dumpsites, beaches, and informal burning sites, they become part of the same plastic pollution crisis.

At Seven Clean Seas, we work with businesses to prevent ocean plastic pollution by building recovery projects in heavily polluted areas, while creating formal, fairly paid jobs for the people doing the work. But recovery should never be an excuse to keep producing, exporting, and mislabelling waste.

The real solution needs to happen both upstream and downstream. We need to consume less, reuse what already exists, regulate what moves across borders, and recover what has already leaked into the environment.

If you’re a brand looking to improve circularity in your processes or reduce plastic in your supply chain, send our team a message.