Voluntary used-clothing collection collapses when the resale market that secretly funds it fails
#00046
Clothing banks look free but are secretly funded by selling the reusable fraction, mostly exported. When export demand collapsed and ultra-fast-fashion flooded banks with unsellable items, each container flipped to a loss — causing operators to quietly withdraw, ending the servic
#00050Pay collectors via a municipal service contract instead of expecting resale to fund it
Have municipalities procure textile collection as a paid service (service contract or per-tonne gate fee), like glass or biowaste, so the operator is paid to collect and divert tonnage and resale revenue just lowers the price — moving commodity risk from the fragile operator to t
#00049Fund collection through cost-indexed EPR support, decoupled from the resale price
Set the EPR support per tonne to the measured end-to-end cost of collecting, sorting, and disposing of textiles, indexed to rise automatically when resale revenue falls — so collection is a cost-recovered public service funded by producers, not a bet on the export price.