Thousands of tonnes of used clothes arrive at the western port of India, Kutch in Gujarat, which is a hub for purchase of second-hand clothes from rich countries which are then resold in the developing countries, after being reprocessed in India.
The garments are sorted according to size, out of which the larger sizes are sold for scrap. Only 30 per cent of the garments that arrive are worthy of being resold, as the rest are ‘too big’ to be sold. All garments for scrap are salvaged for trims and the fabric is cut up to be made into rags. There are also high-end, haute couture garments that are encountered in the heaps, which reflects that consumers are always on a lookout for new fashion every day.
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“We are conserving each and every part of the clothing… Nothing is wasted,” said Guvinder Toor, Managing Director of US Clothing (India), which into business of used clothing and operates state-of-the-art sorting/grading facility based in Kandla Special Economic Zone, Gandhidham, India. It sorts over 30 million pounds of clothing annually. Even fashion retailers such as H&M and others are now into collecting (already) worn apparel to recycle.
Clothing manufacturers in emerging markets report that this endless supply of used apparel stifles the growth of local textile industries. This excess of discarded used-clothing is spawned from the rise of fast fashion, which has been caused by flooding of inexpensive clothing produced from low-wage countries.
