In 2013 Elmar Stroomer and Alex Musembi wanted to create a conscience in fashion, an industry not known for creating items with the intention of recycling them. Now, they operate Africa Collect Textiles (ACT) in Nigeria and Kenya where they turn used clothes into opportunities.
When and why was ACT founded?
Elmar: We officially registered ACT in 2013. The reason why Alex Musembi and I founded ACT was to battle fashion waste. We believe that clothes should be collected, sorted and recycled all over the world.
This sector is extremely behind in so many ways – especially in terms of circularity, if you compare it with plastics. Clothing and textiles are a nightmare. It has a very bad recycling score, less than 1% of all textiles are recycled into something new. Many of the clothes that end up in Africa are never sold and land up in the rivers and landfills straightaway.
Copying and pasting the global North’s systems of collecting, sorting and recycling used clothes and footwear in Africa doesn’t really make sense because the setting is totally different. The models in the Global North are based on reselling second-hand clothes to African countries.
It was an experiment to collect clothes (again) in a country where 80% of the people wear second-hand clothes from the Global North. We just wanted to collect textiles to see what we would get and what exactly we could still do with it. It started as an experiment and we are designing solutions on the go.
Where does ACT operate?
Elmar: Alex Musembi leads the Nairobi, Kenya, area. Eno Andrew-Essien leads Lagos, Nigeria, and I am the link with Europe. We first started in Kenya, and we have been working on this collection network for a long time. After collection, we sort the items, redistribute the wearables ones and upcycle non-wearable clothes into rugs, bags, toys, pillows, etc.
What’s wrong with the textile industry?
There is a lack of infrastructure to process textile waste and that is partly because it’s very complicated to recycle textiles. That also makes it costly. It’s difficult to recycle clothes because often clothes are made of mixed materials. For example, cotton and polyester are blended into one item. And those materials are basically polluting each other. Also buttons, zippers and linings can cause challenges in recycling.
Clothes have rarely been designed to be recycled at the end of the chain and therefore the materials have no value. And used clothes are still not considered as the feedstock for new clothes.
Next to that, most African nations never had the chance to build a textile collection and recycling infrastructure like more developed nations have had. It is time to set that straight, because these clothes are causing a lot of environmental and social problems which affect us all.
Uncontrolled burning on landfills, microplastics are released in rivers and oceans and new clothes are being produced and shipped all over the world, while we already have so many items that can be recycled.
If you want to make the fashion sector circular, then first materials have to be collected, clean and dry. Only then can they be upcycled or downcycled. When picking textiles from landfills or rivers it becomes too dangerous and expensive to recycle them.
Used textiles and footwear should not be mixed with organic waste or worse, and therefore require their own collection system. If we want to recycle textiles in Africa, we need to build this infrastructure. And with ACT we are doing just that.
How do you collect used clothing?
Elmar: We have collection points all over Nairobi and about 15 in Lagos. We have installed them in shopping malls, universities, churches and mosques. We ask people to donate clothes that they don’t use anymore. Whether they are wearable or not, it does not matter.
We pay our collection partners 10 Kenyan Shillings per kilogram (R1.48). And then, for example, when universities install collection points, they raise funds by collecting used textiles and footwear.
After collection, we sort the items. Some wearable items are re-distributed among vulnerable groups. We also support an orphanage. We know that orphanages rather need funds for school fees, medical fees and food than clothes, especially high heels and dresses.
When we provide clothes we make sure that they fit the children, but in general, we try to monetise textile waste through upcycling to support the orphanage financially.
Do you plan to branch out?
Elmar: Yes, we would love to come to South Africa! We believe our model can work well there. What is required is people who are inclined to a model like this and want to support it with used clothes and factories, skills and crafts to process textile waste.
When upcycling the collected materials into new products we make use of crafts that are already available. For example, in Kenya many people do rug or basket weaving. We re-design such products and make sure that our collected and sorted textiles can be processed into them. This way we generate a lot of jobs, while supporting some of these ‘forgotten’ crafts and cultures.
We also see a lot of opportunities in uniforms. Many people in Africa wear them and they form interesting and reliable waste streams. For example, there are millions of people working in security businesses. We work with security firms who used to burn these uniforms after use. But now we take them, and we make something else out of it, like a backpack or a pencil case.
Sometimes we also sell back these upcycled products to the organisation that discarded all these used uniforms in the first place. It has a lot of advantages because materials are not burned anymore, we create jobs in upcycling and fewer new products have to be imported.
See the ACT website for more on the products they sell.
What are ACT’s environmental achievements?
Elmar: So far, we have collected 78,130kg of textiles, we’ve diverted around 390 tonnes of carbon dioxide and we have created 19 direct jobs and 41 indirect jobs. Next year, when we meet our new funding target, we hope to install mechanical capacity to process much more textile waste into materials such as pillow and toy filling and felt.
This interview was edited for clarity. Updated for editorial style on 29 August 2023