What is happening?
In the middle of March, Kennedy Lau, 22, a university fourth-year student of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, goes to the parcel collection point near her home to queue up and collect her parcel as usual.
Back to her flat in Sham Shui Po, she used a pair of scissors to open all the parcels, removed the elaborate wrapping, and tossed it onto the floor, whilst the stool was piled high with the newly unpacked clothes.
And the large bag sitting under the stool contained the clothes she had sorted out to throw away after she cleared out her wardrobe this week.
“The wardrobe is quite small and can’t hold that many clothes, so I clear it out every fortnight,” she said.
She estimates that she throws away about 10 clothing items every two weeks. As her friends are all very fashion-conscious and love keeping up with the latest trends, she have found herself developing a passion for buying clothes, according to Lau.
“I have to walk through two streets to get to the nearest clothes recycling bin, and although I know it’s a bit of a waste, I sometimes just throw my unwanted clothes straight into the bin for the sake of convenience,” she added.
In 2023, Hong Kong disposed of more than 146,000 tonnes of textile waste at landfills, yet the recycling rate remained below 14 percent, according to Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong Waste Statistics for 2023. While clothing donation bins hold the promise of giving clothes a second life, yet a large share of what is collected is eventually exported to overseas second-hand markets or discarded, which are signs of a global glut and overconsumption driven by fast fashion and e‑commerce like Shein.
As polyester, especially polyester‑cotton blends, has become universal in the fashion industry, limited recyclability at scale has become a central bottleneck. NGOs warn textile‑waste volumes are likely to keep rising. In response, brands are piloting design‑for‑recycling, a Hong Kong pilot line capable of separating polyester‑cotton blends has begun limited processing, and second‑hand retail is extending garment lifespans. Together, these measures are starting to expand reuse and recovery capacity, albeit from a small base.
Lau buys clothes from Taobao and Temu, with each item costing no more than HK$70 on average, according to Lau.
Although the volume of textile waste collected fell slightly in 2021, it rebounded in 2023 and has remained at a high level.
To visualize 146,000 tonnes a year, imagine 17,480 suitcases filled with clothes weighing 23 kg each thrown away every day, according to Redress, a Hong Kong-based environmental NGO dedicated to promoting sustainable fashion.
Textile waste in the EPD’s accounting includes discarded clothing and other household textiles, while according to Redress’s document, textile waste also refers to the offcuts generated during the fashion industry’s production process.
Consumption patterns amplify the problem. A 2020 study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation reported that up to 39% of 908 surveyed consumers in Hong Kong had discarded items after wearing them only once. It is quite evident that many people treat their clothes as disposable items, eventually leading to waste.
Redress states on their website that landfilling garments wastes embedded materials and labour, including land, water, timber and oil inputs.
Many items are still wearable when they’re discarded, which is why public attention often turns to recycling and reuse.
Hong Kong has placed over 180 unwanted clothing collection bins in various districts.
Hong Kong’s Community Used Clothes Recycling Bank Scheme, in place since 2006 under the Home Affairs Department, is designed to make donating easy, according to the Home Affairs Department. Currently, four scheme management organisations, Friends of the Earth (HK), Christian Action, The Salvation Army and The Conservancy Association, operate 220 recycling bins across all districts of Hong Kong.
The websites of the four programme management organisations state that donated clothing undergoes basic cleaning and sorting before being redistributed to those in need or exported to countries where demand exists.
The Conservancy Association, Hong Kong's longest-established non-governmental environmental organisation, which focuses on protecting the environment and conserving natural and cultural heritage, has operated community clothing recycling bins since 2006.
In a Zoom interview, Karen Wong, 40, project manager at The Conservancy Association, cited the organisation’s annual report on clothing donations. It shows 468 tonnes collected from April 2023 to March 2024, rising to 522 tonnes from April 2024 to March 2025.
"It's quite clear that this is a growing trend. Hong Kongers discard far more clothing than there are people in need of it," she said.
“Approximately 15% of garments end up in landfill due to damage, soiling or other reasons rendering them unsuitable for reuse,” said Wong.
On that basis, 522 tonnes of clothing will result in around 78,300 kilograms of garments being sent to landfill during the 2024-25 period, and this represents data from just one NGO.
After knowing all the figures, Lau decided to take the old clothes she had been about to throw in the garbage can to the clothing recycling bin.
The metal door on the Shek Kip Mei clothes recycling bin slams shut with a hollow thud. Inside, a jumble of winter jackets and shirts slides into the dark, still smelling faintly of detergent.
“Some of the clothes I no longer want have indeed only been worn a few times, but one of the reasons I used to be reluctant to throw them in the bin was that I didn’t know whether they would actually be sent for recycling and turned into fibres,” Lau said.
Steven Chan, 34, the assistant environmental affairs manager of The Green Earth, a local charitable organisation founded in 2016, explained Hong Kong's second-hand clothing recycling process during a Zoom interview.
Steven shows a document he made that points out the progress after NGOs collected the clothes from the recycling bins.
“The normal progress in Hong Kong is that NGOs will collect garments from clothing recycling bins, transport them to factories for meticulous sorting, select items meeting specifications (clean and without holes), tie all the clothes into a square cube for disinfection, and export them,” he said.
There are no official figures indicating how many second-hand clothing collection points there are in Hong Kong. The NGOs interviewed all said that they have clothing collection factories with which they collaborate, but for confidentiality reasons, the factories were unable to be interviewed or disclose further details.
In 2024, there were six countries or districts to which Hong Kong exported over one tonne of second-hand clothing.
In 2024, the majority of Hong Kong's second-hand clothing was exported to the Philippines, with a total volume of 16,400 tonnes.
Apart from Benin in West Africa, Chan said that unwanted clothes from many countries and regions are also sent to Ghana in Africa.
However, second-hand clothing from Hong Kong is transported to Ghana via transhipment ports, whereas the trade statistics from the Census and Statistics Department show only the destinations of direct exports, so Ghana does not appear in the figures, according to Chan.
“Old winter clothes from many countries and regions are sold to African countries like Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, but there are too many of them; you can even see piles of old clothes lining the coastlines in Africa on Google Maps Street View,” said Chan.
Piles of discarded clothing can be seen along the coastline of Cotonou, located in West Africa. （courtesy photo: Aftonbladet)
According to a report published in September 2024 by teams from Greenpeace’s Africa and Germany offices, Ghana is one of the African countries that receives second-hand clothing from around the world. But the approximately 15 million items of second-hand clothing it receives each week far exceed the capacity of its 30 million-strong population to process them, leading in the long term to clothing being discarded, washing up on the sea, or piling up on the coast.
Gikomba Market is the largest second-hand clothing market in Kenya, selling discarded clothing from China, Europe and the United States.
The report shows that the vast majority of second-hand clothing is produced by the fast fashion industry. Due to poor quality and excessive quantities, nearly half of second-hand clothing cannot be sold at all and ultimately ends up in Ghana’s landfill.
Open burning contributes to severe air pollution, while long‑term accumulation of textile waste clogs waterways and contaminates habitats and water resources.
“The unwanted clothes we discard don’t just burden our own environment; they also worsen pollution in places such as Africa. At the same time, the flood of second‑hand imports puts pressure on domestic apparel industries elsewhere,” Chan said.
According to Greenpeace’s article, with the proliferation of fast fashion and online shopping, approximately 100 billion garments are produced each year globally. Low prices encourage frequent purchases and quick disposal; when items are cheaply made and wear out fast, their affordability lowers the perceived cost of throwing them away. The result is rising throughput and waste, and a deepening drain on resources.