Worn once, wasted forever: How fast fashion is filling up China’s dumpyards

“Fast fashion definitely is not out of fashion” in China, says Sheng Lu, professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, is grappling with an overwhelming surge of textile waste. Each year, around 26 million tonnes of clothes, mostly made of unrecyclable synthetics, find their way into the country’s overflowing landfills, according to a report by AP.

But this isn’t just a problem for China—growing textile waste is an urgent global crisis.

Only 12 per cent of textiles are recycled worldwide, as noted by the fashion sustainability nonprofit Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Shockingly, a mere 1 per cent of castoff clothes are repurposed into new garments, with the vast majority relegated to low-value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.

As fashion trends take over China, what’s the situation like? and how are they dealing with the growing waste? Let’s take a closer look

The fast fashion dilemma

At a factory in Zhejiang province on China’s eastern coast, two piles of discarded cotton clothing and bed linens, loosely sorted into dark and light colors, cover the workroom floor. Jacket sleeves, collars, and brand labels stick out from the heaps as workers feed the garments into shredding machines.

This marks the first step in the textiles’ new life, part of a recycling initiative at the Wenzhou Tiancheng Textile Company, one of China’s largest cotton recycling plants.

However, factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by “fast fashion” — cheap clothes made from unrecyclable synthetics, not cotton.

These synthetics, produced from petrochemicals, contribute to climate change, and air and water pollution, and account for 70 per cent of domestic clothing sales in China.

To make a significant impact, what fashion expert Shaway Yeh calls “circular sustainability” is needed among major Chinese clothing brands to eliminate waste entirely.

“You need to start it from recyclable fibers and then all these waste textiles will be put into use again,” she said.

But this remains an elusive goal: According to the Chinese government, only about 20 per cent of China’s textiles are recycled — and almost all of that is cotton.

The dark side

Chinese cotton is not without a taint of its own, Claudia Bennett of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation said. Much of it is produced through forced labour in Xinjiang province by the country’s ethnic Uyghur minority.

“One in five cotton garments globally is linked to Uyghur forced labour,” Bennett stated.

In May, the US blocked imports from 26 Chinese cotton traders and warehouses to avoid goods made with Uyghur forced labour. However, due to the opaque supply chain, Uyghur cotton ends up in garments produced in other countries that don’t carry the “made-in-China” label, Bennett explained.

“Many, many, many clothing brands are linked to Uyghur forced labor through the cotton,” she said. They “hide behind the lack of transparency in the supply chain.”

Are big brands escaping easy?

China’s influence on global fashion is undeniable, driven by e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu, which have established the country as a dominant force in cheap fashion across more than 150 countries.

A report this year from independent fashion watchdog Remake, which assessed major clothing companies on their environmental, human rights, and equitability practices, revealed a troubling lack of accountability among these well-known brands.

Shein, known for its vast network of 6,000 Chinese clothing factories, received a mere 6 out of 150 possible points in the assessment. Temu scored even lower with a zero rating. Similarly, U.S. brands like SKIMS and Fashion Nova also scored poorly, with zero points each.

In contrast, U.S. retailer Everlane emerged as a top scorer with 40 points, though only half were attributed to sustainability practices

Is China’s domestic policy really helping?

Cotton recycled from used clothing is banned from being used to make new garments inside China. This rule was initially aimed at stamping out fly-by-night Chinese operations recycling dirty or otherwise contaminated material.

But now it means the huge spools of tightly woven rope-like cotton yarn produced at the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory from used clothing can only be sold for export, mostly to Europe.

Making matters worse, many Chinese consumers are unwilling to buy used items anyway, something the Wenzhou factory sales director, Kowen Tang, attributes to increasing household incomes.

“They want to buy new clothes, the new stuff,” he said.

The rise of sustainable brands

Among younger Chinese, a growing awareness of sustainability has sparked the emergence of innovative “remade” clothing businesses.

Thirty-year-old designer Da Bao founded Times Remake in 2019, a Shanghai-based brand that transforms secondhand clothes into trendy new garments. In the company’s workshop, tailors repurpose secondhand denims and sweatshirts, creating unique, stylish fashions.

What began with Da Bao and his father-in-law sharing their designs online has now grown into a flagship store in Shanghai’s fashionable Jing’an District. The store features their remade garments alongside vintage items like Levi’s and Carhartt jackets.

“Our designs combine past styles with current fashion aesthetics to create something unique,” Bao said.

Zhang Na’s fashion label, Reclothing Bank, takes sustainability a step further by using materials such as plastic bottles, fishing nets, and flour sacks to make clothes, bags, and accessories. Each item’s label includes a QR code detailing its composition, production process, and material origins. Zhang employs traditional methods, such as using textile fibers made from pineapple leaves, a practice from the Philippines.

“We can basically develop thousands of new fabrics and materials,” Zhang said, highlighting the innovative potential of sustainable fashion.

Reclothing Bank began in 2010 to give “new life to old things,” Zhang said of her store in a historic Shanghai alley with a mix of Western and Chinese architecture. A large used clothes deposit box sat outside the entrance.

“Old items actually carry a lot of people’s memories and emotions,” she said.

Zhang said she has seen sustainability consciousness grow since she opened her store, with core customers in their 20s and 30s.

Bao Yang, a college student who dropped by the store on a visit to Shanghai, said she was surprised at the feel of the clothes.

“I think it’s amazing, because when I first entered the door, I heard that many of the clothes were actually made of shells or corn (husks), but when I touched the clothes in detail, I had absolutely no idea that they would have this very comfortable feel,” she said.

Still, she conceded that buying sustainable clothing is a hard sell. “People of my age are more addicted to fast fashion, or they do not think about the sustainability of clothes,” she said.

So what lies ahead?

Recycled garments sold at stores like Reclothing Bank carry a much higher price tag than fast-fashion brands due to their costly production methods. This price difference is a significant barrier, according to Professor Sheng Lu.

“Studies repeatedly show consumers are not willing to pay more for clothing made from recycled materials; instead, they actually expect a lower price because they see such clothing as made of secondhand stuff,” Lu explained.

The high costs involved in acquiring, sorting, and processing used garments make it difficult for sustainable fashion to succeed on a wide scale in China, where clothes are inexpensive to produce. “Companies do not have the financial incentive,” Lu said.

For real change, Lu believes there needs to be “more clear signals from the very top,” referring to government targets similar to those that propelled China’s EV industry. However, he also noted that the government could be a powerful ally if it sees economic potential in sustainable fashion, potentially triggering policy shifts and new investments in the sector.

For now, the plastic-wrapped cones of tightly wound cotton being loaded onto trucks at the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory are all headed to overseas markets, far from where their recycling journey began.

With input from AP