Walking through the bustling Gikomba market in Nairobi, it’s not uncommon to see piles of worn-out and discarded second-hand clothes strewn along the roadside. Vendors sort through bales of second-hand garments, salvaging what they can while tossing the unsellable pieces onto growing heaps of waste.

It’s a familiar sight in many African countries which continue to bear the brunt of second-hand clothes imports. Every day, hundreds of garments – too damaged or low-quality to be resold – are left to clog drainage systems, rot in landfills, or go up in toxic smoke. A 2023 report found that Kenya alone imports 300 million pieces of unsellable second-hand synthetic clothing annually, only to be dumped and landfilled.