The world is deciding what happens to our clothes.

The Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya (MCAK) is urging the government to review the 35% import duty on second-hand clothing, chief executive Martin Gitau said during Mashujaa Day exhibition week at Eldoret Polytechnic, KBC and The Star reported on 16 October. The association says the trade supports more than 2 million jobs, contributes an estimated KSh 12 billion in annual tax revenue and clothes at least 20 million Kenyans a year.

Gitau also called for enforcement of quality standards so Kenya does not become “a dumping ground for substandard clothes and shoes,” and for policies that let second-hand traders and local manufacturers coexist. Kenya’s mitumba imports rose from 230,535 tonnes in 2024 to 250,527 tonnes in 2025, Business Daily reported, citing the national statistics bureau’s 2026 Economic Survey.

The EU’s revised Waste Framework Directive took effect on 16 October 2025. It requires every member state to set up an EPR scheme for textiles and footwear, with producer fees adjusted for durability and recyclability, the European Commission said. It also treats all separately collected textiles as waste until they are sorted, so unsorted textiles shipped abroad fall under the Waste Shipment Regulation. Countries must write the rules into national law by 17 June 2027 and launch schemes by 17 April 2028. Separate collection has been mandatory since 1 January 2025.

Progress is uneven. Ireland opened a consultation on a draft textiles EPR delivery plan in July, and Il Sole 24 Ore reports Italy’s decree is expected by year-end. Zero Waste Europe has warned that rising collection volumes are straining reuse operators before EPR money arrives.

American Circular Textiles (AMCIRC) published its second implementation brief on California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act (SB 707) on 15 October. According to the brief, a court on 17 September denied the American Apparel and Footwear Association’s request for a preliminary injunction against CalRecycle’s selection of Landbell USA as the state’s sole producer responsibility organization (PRO). A hearing on the underlying challenge is set for 12 March 2027.

Producer registration, due 1 July 2026, remains open for a $1,000 fee covering 2026–27, and AMCIRC says unregistered producers risk fines of up to $10,000 a day. CalRecycle held informal rulemaking workshops on 13 August and 29 September and will hold a hybrid session on 12 November. Landbell’s statewide needs assessment is due 1 March 2027, and regulations can take effect no earlier than July 2028.

U.S. apparel importers face a fast-changing tariff picture, according to a 12 October analysis by the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke. The U.S. Trade Representative imposed Section 301 tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners it found had failed to ban forced-labor imports. They took effect 24 July, with planned tariff-rate quotas for some textile and apparel imports from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia. A legal challenge was argued on 30 September and the duties remain in effect.

Separately, the 10% worldwide Section 122 surcharge ran from 24 February to 24 July. On 8 October the Court of International Trade certified a class of importers seeking refunds of the IEEPA tariffs that the Supreme Court has held unlawful.

Greenpeace Africa has called on Ghana’s government to ban imports of “dead waste,” meaning clothing that cannot be reused, repurposed or resold, the Ghana News Agency reported on 8 October. The call followed a brand audit of 201 discarded garments collected at James Town Beach, Kantamanto Market and Agbogbloshie in Accra, which found labels from H&M, Primark, Marks & Spencer and Next.

Project lead Hellen Kahaso Dena said Kantamanto traders estimate about 40% of incoming clothing is waste. She stressed that Greenpeace is not seeking a full ban on second-hand imports, which sustain many livelihoods. A petition with more than 25,000 signatures, delivered to Ghana’s trade ministry, calls for transparent grading, stronger EPR and support for repair and reuse.

H&M Group, Inditex, BESTSELLER and adidas launched the Apparel Recovery Coalition (ARC) at Kantamanto Market in Accra on 2 October, working with The Or Foundation and with Circle Economy as independent facilitator, the Ghana News Agency reported. Over two years, ARC will design and test a producer responsibility framework for used clothing that crosses national borders. Its first demonstration project will look at how producer contributions could strengthen Ghana’s existing circular textile economy.

The coalition says Kantamanto recirculates about 25 million garments a month and supports tens of thousands of workers. Rev. Opoku Afreh, president of the market’s traders association, KOBA, said ARC should “build upon the existing knowledge, skills and resourcefulness of the Kantamanto community rather than overlook or replace them.”

A report by the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, commissioned by Humana, warns that future Basel Convention rules treating reusable second-hand clothing as waste could raise costs, delay shipments and threaten livelihoods in Kenya, Ecotextile News reported on 2 October. The study compares a “Waste Control” scenario, which would expand prior-informed-consent permits, with a “Building a Circular Economy” scenario that treats verified reusable garments as second-life products. It cites field studies finding that true waste is generally below 2% of imported bales.

At the Basel working group in Geneva in June, proposals to tighten controls were not advanced for adoption. Parties and observers may comment until 30 November, ahead of the COP-18 meeting in Panama in April 2027, Reuse News (reusenews.eu) reported.

Igers, part of the Haiki+ group, has opened a textile-waste recycling plant in San Pietro Mosezzo, in the province of Novara, licensed to handle 19,000 tonnes a year, Il Sole 24 Ore reported on 21 September. Italy’s recovery plan co-financed €1.3 million of the roughly €8 million cost. The plant links 56 machines for ozone sanitizing, near-infrared fiber sorting, shredding and baling, and records each step on a blockchain so bales can be traced.

The company says it recovers more than 96% of incoming material. Most goes into non-woven materials for packaging, padding, construction, cars and furniture, and the rest is spun into yarn. Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin attended the opening. According to the report, the decree for Italy’s textile EPR scheme is expected by year-end.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), joined by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), introduced H.R. 10454, the Textile Waste Reduction Act, on 16 September. It was referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill would give EPA two years after enactment to produce a National Textile Circularity Strategy, including a needs assessment of textiles that are landfilled, burned, recovered or exported.

It would also create an interagency working group that includes Customs and Border Protection, the FTC and NIST. An advisory board would include members from reuse, repair, recovery and recycling organizations, as well as state, local and Tribal governments. EPA would publish textile data every year and list available federal grants. No further action has been recorded. EPA’s most recent detailed textile figures date to 2018.

Chile’s Ministry of the Environment has extended by six months its deadline to draft the decree that will set collection and recovery targets for textiles under the country’s Extended Producer Responsibility law, Law 20.920. The extension comes in Exempt Resolution No. 05165, dated 10 September. The ministry declared textiles a priority product in 2025 and formally opened the decree process in March 2026, with an original deadline of 10 September.

The resolution says the ministry needs more time to organize its data and finish forming an expanded committee of producers, waste managers, grassroots recyclers, academics and NGOs. It must also design public-participation sessions and complete the economic and social impact analysis the law requires.

Seamless, Australia’s voluntary clothing stewardship scheme, is urging the federal government to commit now to mandatory, nationally coordinated clothing stewardship by 2029. In a 10 September statement, Seamless said 58 clothing producers are members, out of about 14,000 trading in Australia, so most of the cost still falls on councils, charities and households. Members voluntarily pay up to 4 cents per new garment to fund longer-lasting design, repair and resale, collection and recycling, and consumer education.

According to Seamless, Australians buy 1.51 billion new clothing items a year, or 55 per person, and 220,000 tonnes of clothing textiles go to landfill each year. It adds that more than 80 countries have mandatory EPR frameworks, including 28 regulated schemes for clothing and textiles.

ThredUp reported record second-quarter revenue of $90.8 million on 5 August, up 17% from a year earlier, with active buyers up 21% to 1.77 million. It also lowered its second-half outlook, citing economic uncertainty among its most price-sensitive buyers. A day later Savers Value Village, the largest for-profit thrift operator in the U.S. and Canada, reported second-quarter net sales up 7.4% to $448.2 million, with U.S. same-store sales up 6.6%. It also introduced ThriftIQ, an AI pricing tool it says has priced more than 25 million items in 58 stores.

The results match ThredUp’s 2026 Resale Report, published in April. It found U.S. secondhand apparel grew 13% in 2025, nearly four times faster than clothing retail overall, and called supply “the new constraint.”