Donated clothes still end up in landfills; they get thrown away in some of the largest clothing dumps in the world. Here’s everything you need to know before you do your next wardrobe checkout.
Key Takeaways
- Not all donated clothes are reused: A significant portion of secondhand clothing, especially low-quality items, ends up in landfills in African countries, with markets rejecting as much as 40% of imported garments.
- Overflowing landfills: Countries like Ghana and Kenya are grappling with massive textile waste that leads to environmental issues such as soil contamination, microplastic pollution, and blocked drainage systems.
- Policy efforts are growing: African countries like Rwanda have introduced import restrictions to reduce dependence on secondhand clothing, and recycling initiatives are gaining momentum.
Clothing donation might seem like a simple and selfless act—declutter your closet, drop off that old sweater at your local thrift store, and feel good about contributing to a good cause. But behind that quick drop-off lies a global supply chain that’s a bit more complicated than many people realize.
A 2018 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation showed that 87% of all clothing textiles get incinerated or end up in landfills. That figure includes the waste generated in African countries, where the vast majority of imported secondhand clothes don’t get reused. Local traders purchase these clothes in bales without knowing the quality or contents in advance. Often, they end up with a mix of wearable garments and waste—items that are stained, torn, or too worn out to resell.
Every year, East Africa imports around 900 million items of used clothing, much of which is of such poor quality that it can’t be sold. Many of these garments—cheap, synthetic fast fashion pieces sewed together by children—are not built to last and are often unwearable by the time they reach Africa.
But why donated clothes still end up in landfills? How much donated clothing is thrown away? Let’s get into it.
How Does Clothing Donation Work?
When you donate clothes, the journey starts with sorting. Charities, thrift stores, or donation bins collect the garments, but not every piece gets displayed on racks. Only about 10-20% of donated clothes ever make it to store shelves. Why? There’s simply too much stuff. Donations pile up faster than stores can sell them, and many garments are either damaged or just not desirable.
Those high-end brands you dropped off? Sure, they might cut. But the stained T-shirts or worn-out leggings? They’ve got a different destiny. Sorting centers sift through mountains of donations, separating what’s wearable, what can be recycled, and what’s essentially trash.
For the wearable items, the story doesn’t end there. Many of these clothes get bundled up and sent overseas. In fact, a large portion of secondhand clothes are exported to developing countries, where they flood local markets. It’s a huge business.
Global trade in secondhand clothing is worth over $4 billion a year, and African countries like Kenya, Ghana, and Rwanda are some of the biggest importers.
But it’s not all bad. The secondhand market does have its perks. For many people in lower-income countries, buying secondhand clothes is more affordable than purchasing new ones. Plus, it reduces the demand for brand-new garments, cutting back on the resources needed to produce them. Still, with the volume of clothing that’s donated, the global secondhand market gets overloaded.
And that brings us to the next part of the story: what happens to all the clothes that can’t be sold, recycled, or repurposed? Spoiler alert: a lot of them end up in landfills—yes, even after being “donated for a good cause.”
Why Donated Clothes End Up in Landfills
One major reason donated clothes end up in landfills is simply their low quality. The clothes that end up abroad aren’t necessarily the cream of the crop. Many of them are unsold leftovers from thrift stores or items that are too old, low-quality, or out-of-fashion to find a buyer locally. They’re packed into massive bales, often sight unseen, and shipped across the world to places that already have their own clothing industries.
The rise of fast fashion has flooded the world with cheaply made, disposable clothing that doesn’t hold up over time. Brands like Shein, Zara, and H&M produce garments designed for short-term use—think trendy pieces that might last a season or two before falling apart.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation states that the average number of times a garment is worn before it’s discarded has decreased by 36% in the past 15 years. This trend leads to a massive surplus of barely worn but low-quality clothes being donated.
Donated clothes still end up in landfills, yes, but, in most cases, these landfills aren’t local.
The Export of Donated Clothes to Developing Countries
Once clothes are sorted, a big chunk of them take a journey across the world to developing countries. In reality, about 70% of the world’s donated clothes end up in Africa. This massive export system is part of the global secondhand clothing trade, which has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. But while it may seem like an easy solution to fashion waste, the effects on local economies and environments are more complex than most people realize.
One of the main reasons donated clothes head overseas is sheer volume. Western countries, especially the U.S., the U.K., and Germany, donate far more clothing than local markets can handle. The U.S. alone sends nearly 700,000 tons of used clothing abroad every year.
The U.K. exports around 351,000 tons annually, according to Oxfam. The majority of this clothing is shipped to developing countries in Africa, with Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania being major importers.
Clothing Donations Cause Huge Textile Waste Issues in Africa
Ghana, for example, receives about 15 million used garments every week, much of it arriving through Accra’s Kantamanto Market—one of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world. However, only about 40% of these clothes end up being resold. The rest? It gets rejected due to low quality or damage and is either dumped in overflowing landfills or burned, creating massive environmental problems.
In Kenya, the secondhand clothing industry is known as “mitumba,” which translates to “bundles” in Swahili. The country imports roughly 100,000 tons of secondhand clothing every year. While these clothes do offer affordable options for lower-income communities, they’ve also led to the near collapse of the local textile industry.
In the 1980s, Kenya’s textile industry employed around 500,000 people, but today, that number has shrunk dramatically to just over 20,000. The flood of cheap, secondhand clothes makes it nearly impossible for local manufacturers to compete, stifling growth and innovation.
Overflowing Landfills and the Pollution Crisis in Africa
Many African countries are now grappling with overflowing landfills, and textile waste from donated clothes is a big part of the problem. In Ghana, Accra’s Old Fadama landfill is infamous for being overloaded with waste, including tons of clothing that didn’t sell in local markets. The clothes that are dumped there take decades to decompose if they ever do. And the burning of textiles, especially synthetics like polyester, releases harmful toxins into the air.
Burning clothes made of synthetic materials emit toxic fumes like dioxins and furans, which can cause serious health problems for local communities. This isn’t just a local issue either—this textile waste is part of a global environmental crisis that gets dumped in developing countries.
The Microplastic Problem
Many of the clothes that are shipped to Africa are made from synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon, and acrylic. These materials don’t just biodegrade—they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, releasing microplastics into the environment. When clothes degrade in landfills or are burned, these tiny plastic particles make their way into the soil and water.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation highlights that more than half of all fast fashion garments are made from synthetic fibers, and they shed millions of microplastic fibers when they break down. These fibers often end up in rivers and oceans, polluting water sources and damaging marine life.
Coastal cities like Accra and Mombasa are seeing an increase in microplastics contaminating their waterways, which ultimately impact the global food chain. Fish, for example, ingest these plastics, and they can end up on dinner plates around the world.
The problem doesn’t stop there. These synthetic materials also block drainage systems, contributing to flooding. In fact, in some parts of Accra, discarded clothing is infamous for clogging sewers, and worsening floods during the rainy season.
Soil Contamination and Agricultural Impact
When clothing waste piles up, it doesn’t just create a visual eyesore—it also contaminates the soil. Fabrics made from non-biodegradable materials like polyester can leach harmful chemicals into the ground, poisoning the soil over time.
Many of the dyes and treatments used in fast fashion are toxic and seep into the earth as clothes break down. Studies by the World Resources Institute show that some textile chemicals used in fast fashion production contain heavy metals like lead and cadmium, which are incredibly harmful to both the environment and human health.
In areas like Kenya and Tanzania, where farming is a key livelihood, soil contamination from textile waste can have a devastating impact on local agriculture. Poisoned soil leads to reduced crop yields, which puts food security at risk in communities already struggling with poverty. The waste left behind by our fast fashion addiction is creating an environmental chain reaction that ripples far beyond the original point of sale.
Water Contamination and Scarcity
Another disastrous effect of donated clothes getting thrown away is its impact on water sources. The decomposing textiles in landfills leach chemicals into nearby water supplies, contaminating rivers, streams, and even groundwater.
In Ghana and Kenya, this has become a significant issue as the textile waste from secondhand markets mixes with municipal waste. The OR Foundation found that Accra’s waterways are regularly polluted with clothing-related debris, contributing to widespread water contamination.
Adding to the crisis, the textile waste crisis worsens water scarcity by polluting clean water sources. Textile production itself is incredibly water-intensive—producing one cotton T-shirt can require up to 2,700 liters of water, and when this shirt ends up as waste, it adds insult to injury. Polluted water sources become undrinkable, and the toxic runoff impacts farming and ecosystems downstream.
Climate Change and Carbon Emissions
It’s no surprise that fast fashion’s environmental impact doesn’t end at the landfill. The entire lifecycle of these clothes—from production to disposal—generates a significant carbon footprint. Manufacturing, shipping, and burning these garments contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, which accelerate climate change.
The fashion industry accounts for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, more than aviation and shipping combined. And when we donate clothes that end up being burned or dumped in African landfills, we’re adding even more to this total. Every time a piece of synthetic clothing is incinerated, it releases harmful greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.
This is especially concerning for African countries, many of which are already on the frontlines of climate change. From extreme heat waves to unpredictable rainfall patterns, African communities are facing environmental disasters that are worsened by the pollution from fast fashion waste.
Governments Try To Stop Clothes Dumped in Africa.
Many African nations are trying to push back against the overwhelming influx of secondhand clothes. The World Bank reports that the secondhand clothing industry while supporting jobs in some sectors, has been a major contributor to the “deindustrialization” of Africa’s textile and clothing manufacturing industries. In 2016, countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania proposed a ban on secondhand clothing imports to revive their domestic textile industries.
Rwanda stuck to the ban, but Kenya and others backed down under pressure from international trade organizations, notably the United States. Rwanda faced significant backlash, including the loss of trade privileges under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), but the country stood firm, choosing to prioritize its local economy.
The global secondhand clothing market may seem like a win-win: reducing waste in one part of the world while providing affordable clothing in another. However, the reality is far from that simple. While donated clothes may offer short-term benefits for some, they often come at a significant cost to the environment, local economies, and communities already struggling with poverty.
What started as a good intention is now a tangled web of overconsumption, global waste, and environmental degradation.
But Why Many Donated Clothes Are Sent to Africa in the First Place?
It’s a combination of overproduction, excess waste, and a global market for secondhand goods that sees African countries as key players.
First off, fast fashion has created a tsunami of clothing. Big brands churn out new collections every few weeks, and the result is a massive surplus of clothes that are often worn only a handful of times before being tossed into the donation bin.
People in Western countries donate more clothes than ever before because they’re buying more than ever before. The numbers say it all: The average American discards around 81 pounds (37 kg) of clothing each year. Globally, about 100 billion garments are produced annually, and a large portion of those get donated when they’re no longer wanted.
But there’s more to it. African countries have been targeted for these imports because of the longstanding economic gap between their populations and Western nations. In many African countries, buying new clothes is a luxury that most people can’t afford.
A brand-new shirt from a local manufacturer could cost significantly more than a secondhand one imported from Europe or the U.S. For example, in Kenya, a secondhand T-shirt can cost as little as 50 Kenyan shillings (about 34 cents), compared to 500 shillings for a new one.
This demand for affordable clothing has turned Africa into a dumping ground for the West’s unwanted clothes. But it’s not just about affordability. The infrastructure to process this enormous volume of textile waste doesn’t exist in Western countries. Shipping clothes overseas is a cheaper and more convenient way to deal with the excess, essentially passing the problem on to developing nations.
What Needs to Change to Clothing Donations?
It’s clear that the current system of donating clothes, especially to African countries, is broken. Clothing donations, while well-intentioned, often cause more harm than good when they result in waste, environmental damage, and economic disruption. But this cycle doesn’t have to continue. By improving donation practices, changing policies, holding brands accountable, and educating consumers, we can shift the industry toward a more sustainable future. Let’s break down what needs to change.
Improving Donation Practices
One of the biggest misconceptions about clothing donations is that any clothing is better than no clothing. Unfortunately, this mindset leads to donation dumping—where people treat donation bins like trash cans for low-quality, worn-out clothes. Donating isn’t about offloading everything you don’t want; it’s about giving something that can actually be reused and cherished.
To prevent donation dumping, we need to start by emphasizing the importance of donating quality clothing. It’s essential to donate items that are still in good condition—clothes you’d feel comfortable wearing yourself. If something is stained, torn, or too worn, it’s probably better suited for recycling or repurposing than donating.
People also need to be more conscious about reuse and repair. Instead of immediately tossing out clothes with minor wear and tear, we can embrace a “make do and mend” mentality. Patch up a hole, resew a button, or get creative with alterations. Repurposing old clothes into rags, and crafts, or even upcycling them into new garments can keep them out of landfills altogether.
A key takeaway here? Don’t donate just to feel better about clearing out your closet. Donate mindfully—and if something is no longer wearable, find other ways to recycle it rather than passing the problem on to someone else.
Policy Solutions
Governments in Africa are starting to take notice of the harmful effects of secondhand clothing imports, and some have begun to take action. A few years ago, Rwanda introduced import restrictions on secondhand clothes to boost its own textile industry and reduce reliance on foreign garments.
The aim was to protect local manufacturers and create more jobs domestically, rather than being flooded with unsellable garments from the West. But Rwanda’s move was met with pushback from larger economies like the United States, which benefits from offloading surplus clothes.
African countries are caught between the need to regulate clothing imports and the international trade policies that make it difficult to outright ban secondhand clothes. However, more governments are considering import restrictions or increased taxes on used clothing to curb the waste problem. These efforts highlight a growing desire to reclaim local markets and industries from the overwhelming wave of donated garments.
But policy solutions shouldn’t only come from African governments. International organizations like the UN and World Trade Organization (WTO) can also play a role by promoting sustainable textile practices and supporting African countries in creating policies that protect their environments and economies. Initiatives that encourage circular fashion—where clothes are designed for longevity, reuse, and recyclability—could help reduce the amount of waste that gets exported.
Brand Responsibility and Accountability
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room—fast fashion brands. They are the biggest culprits behind the avalanche of low-quality, throwaway clothes flooding our wardrobes. These brands churn out trendy, poorly made clothes at breakneck speed, encouraging consumers to buy more and discard more. It’s a system that promotes overproduction and waste by design.
Fast fashion companies need to take responsibility for the life cycle of their garments. Right now, most brands wash their hands of their products as soon as they’re sold, leaving consumers to figure out what to do with them when they wear out.
However, brands should be involved in end-of-life management for their products. This could include creating take-back programs, where customers can return old clothes for recycling or repurposing, or ensuring that the materials used in production are biodegradable or recyclable.
Brands should also be held accountable for their environmental footprint. This means slowing down production and moving towards sustainable materials and manufacturing processes. The fashion industry is responsible for a significant chunk of global pollution, and it’s time that companies stop passing the burden of this waste onto developing nations.
On the flip side, consumers have a role to play here too, but brands need to lead the way by providing better options and making sustainable fashion more accessible.
Consumer Responsibility
As much as we love a good deal, fast fashion addiction has major consequences. Western consumers, in particular, need to be aware of the global impact their clothing habits have on the world. That $5 T-shirt may feel like a steal, but its afterlife could mean adding to the mountains of waste-choking landfills in Kenya or Ghana.
This is where the sustainable fashion movement comes in. Slow fashion encourages mindful consumption, where we buy less but buy better—opting for higher quality, longer-lasting garments made from sustainable materials. Instead of following every trend, we focus on building a capsule wardrobe with timeless pieces that can be worn again and again.
To make a real difference, we need to be more conscious of the clothing lifecycle. That means thinking before we buy, finding ways to cope with fashion FOMO, wearing what we already own, and repairing or repurposing clothes instead of throwing them away. When we do need to donate, we should be donating clothes that still have life in them, not just passing the buck on our wardrobe cleanouts.
Lastly, raising awareness is crucial. Many consumers in Western countries simply aren’t aware that their donated clothes often end up in landfills in developing nations. By educating people on the true impact of their fast fashion habits, we can encourage more responsible fashion choices and reduce the damage being done to communities in Africa and beyond.
P.S. If you are new to the movement, you can check out these ethical fashion books for beginners.
Final Thoughts On What Happens To Donated Clothes
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to donated clothes. In many cases, donated clothes still end up in landfills. The fashion industry is at a crossroads, and it’s up to all of us—brands, consumers, governments, and international organizations—to take action.
It’s time to treat our clothes like the valuable resources they are, rather than disposable items. The environmental impact of donated clothes landing in African countries is a ticking time bomb. Overflowing landfills, toxic air from burning textiles, microplastics invading rivers and oceans, and poisoned soil—these are just a few of the consequences.
The long-term damage not only affects the environment but also the people and communities who rely on these ecosystems to survive. While donating clothes might feel like a good deed, the truth is that without systemic change in how we produce, consume, and dispose of clothing, our fashion habits will continue to be a huge environmental disaster.
Konstantina Antoniadou is an expert sustainability writer, certified in Chemicals and Health by Johns Hopkins University, where she focused on the toxicity of commonly found household chemicals and their health impacts. She has also completed specialized studies in Sustainable Fashion (Copenhagen Business School), Business Models for Sustainability (BMS), and Sustainable Development Goals (University of Copenhagen), deepening her expertise in the connection between personal choices and global environmental change. With years of experience as a senior writer and researcher, Konstantina now leads our reviews of non-toxic home products, beauty and skincare brands, and sustainable fashion. K. is also the creator of the popular 7-Day Non-Toxic Living Challenge, downloaded over 2,000 times and praised for its accessible, science-backed tips.
