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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 surroundings 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 growing nations causes important environmental, social, and well being issues. The EU has to place an finish to this observe,” 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 improvement in textiles, arguments which led the eight-nation East African Group to conform to ban second-hand clothes imports in 2016, though the plan was later deserted.
Nonetheless, hundreds 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 sweet high quality garments, and if a provider needs to promote us trash, we’d be pleased to refuse their consignment,” mentioned Teresia Wairimu Njenga, who chairs the Mitumba Consortium Affiliation of Kenya.
The business is conscious that an export ban would pose an existential risk to its future.
Final 12 months, the Mitumba affiliation commissioned analysis which claimed that the second-hand clothes commerce in Kenya gives 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 tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods in danger on the false altar of defending the surroundings.
“Quite than being a risk to the surroundings, second-hand garments are a vital pillar in international endeavours in the direction of reuse, a round financial system and sustainability within the textile sector,” she added.
The French surroundings ministry is main the marketing campaign for a ban after French lawmakers accepted a brand new legislation that might progressively impose fines of as much as €10-per-item of clothes by 2030, as effectively for a ban on promoting for such merchandise. Europe at present 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 line 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 12 months of second-hand garments, accounting for 30 p.c of the worldwide market.
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