Charlotte Varcoe
ISSUES around textile waste continue with Statewide Cleaning Cloths stating retail markets they sell preloved clothing too will start to become “more particular”.
It comes weeks after it was announced local opportunity shops found themselves in an influx of unsellable secondhand clothes.
Statewide Cleaning Cloths was established almost 30 years ago and in 2003 started service charities by providing collection services for unwanted donated clothing, shoes, bags and toys.
These items are packaged and shipped to Malaysia where they were then sorted into various categories.
This is estimated to give about 55 per cent of the clothing a second life with the reminder products being recycled into mechanically separated fibres for mats, blankets, bags, wiper materials, refurbishment and more.
Statewide operator’s Asian Operations chief executive officer Dale Warren said what was happening was the retail markers were becoming more particular about the clothing they were receiving.
“That is good for those countries because the materials they receive are getting better and better,” Mr Warren said.
“The problem then is the unwanted materials will become a bigger portion of the textiles which are collected because there is so much consumption and the amount of material has increased quite significantly in the last 10-years and that is the problem.”
He said the change which was currently happening due to large consumption meant excess materials people received was increasing and the recipients of secondhand clothing were looking for better quality material.
“That change is slowly happening and that will be a trend going forward for the textile recovery in the future,” Mr Warren said.
“You have countries that have subsidies for their collection program because first world countries have expensive labor costs and logistic costs and those costs have to be met by sale and resale of clothing.”
He said Statewide was still operating the collection service but was signalling to charities the process was changing.
“We are a processor and a lot of people that are in the sector and not necessarily handling the material themselves and processing it,” Mr Warren said.
“They just sell it onto the next person and the next person and it ends up being traded not actually processed by the people they are dealing with.”
He said Statewide would want to see charity shops become more involved in the process as well as the broader community.
“They can then see what can be done rather than just give it to someone and they send it somewhere,” Mr Warren said.
“They don’t really know what happens and hopefully they will make conscious decisions in buying stuff.”
He said textiles and manufactured goods were “going down the same space” and Statewide did not “want to do things short term”.
“We want to do them long term so the discussion is about how to do it long term,” Mr Warren said.
“The whole world is focused on environmental goals which is interesting and this includes paper, plastic and metal but these materials need to find better markets.”
He said the collection systems implemented in China was successful and expected them to embrace more significantly in the coming years.
Mr Warren also said he would like to have the government assist with a solution.
Minister for Environment Susan Close said the state government had only recently been made aware that previous pathways to export of unusable donated clothing were “now facing challenges of this scope”.
“The South Australian Government has recently provided increased assistance to the charitable recycling sector by providing a landfill levy subsidy or waiver on 75 per cent of their disposal costs,” Ms Close said.
“This is an increased level of disposal support up from 50 per cent previously.”
She said other charitable recyclers were currently adjusting their business model and considering in-store donation so they have more control on the suitability of donated goods for resale versus outside store drop off.
“In May this year the South Australian government trialed free drop-off events at eight locations across metropolitan Adelaide to provide a recycling pathway for sheets, towels and linens called ‘Give a Sheet’,” Ms Close said.
“This model recovered 9700 kilograms of linens which will be recycled by Australian textile recyclers Blocktexx.
“Given the success of this project and the eagerness of South Australians to recycle their textiles, future drop-off events are being considered to recover and recycle unwearable textiles or textiles not fit for sale or export.”
