World’s second-richest country sends 70 tonnes of used clothes to Malaysia every week. Here’s why

Singapore is sending up to 70 tonnes of unwanted clothes to Malaysia every week, turning a growing mountain of discarded garments into a cross-border textile recovery operation. The clothes are collected from recycling bins across Singapore before being transported to Life Line Clothing’s facility in Port Klang, Malaysia. There, they are sorted and divided according to whether they can be worn again, repurposed or sent for further processing.

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The weekly volume has doubled in about two years. And that increase offers a glimpse into a bigger problem facing Singapore and many other wealthy economies: what happens to clothes once people no longer want them?

Where Singapore’s unwanted clothes go

The journey begins in Singapore, where social enterprise Cloop operates textile recycling bins. People can deposit clothes they no longer need at these collection points. Instead of going straight into general waste, the garments are collected and sent across the border to Malaysia.

Up to 70 tonnes of clothing now make the journey every week. At Port Klang, Life Line Clothing sorts the garments and decides what can still be useful. Some clothes remain suitable for wearing, while others are too damaged or unsuitable for resale but can still serve another purpose.

The system has become considerably larger than it was two years ago, when the weekly volume was roughly half the current amount.

What happens to the clothes in Malaysia?

Not every item arriving at the Malaysian facility gets a second life as clothing. Around half of the garments are resold. They are generally compressed into large bales before being shipped to wholesalers serving secondhand markets in countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Papua New Guinea.

For those clothes, the process effectively extends their usable life. The other half takes a different route. Instead of being sold as garments, the textiles are turned into rags or industrial wiping cloths.

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Some pieces cannot be reused or repurposed at all. Those are treated as a last-resort category and may be incinerated to generate electricity. That means the contents of a recycling bin can end up in several very different places.

Why recycling clothes is not as simple as it sounds

A piece of clothing may look like a single product, but recycling it can be surprisingly complicated.

Garments can contain different types of fibres, along with buttons, zips, dyes and other components. Once several materials are combined, separating them for recycling becomes more difficult.

That is why sorting plays such an important role.

Workers need to assess the condition and composition of each garment before deciding whether it can be resold, converted into another useful material or sent for disposal.

In other words, putting an unwanted T-shirt into a textile collection bin is only the beginning of its journey.

Why Singapore is sending so much clothing abroad

The 70-tonne weekly figure highlights the sheer scale of textile waste generated by a modern, affluent society.

Clothing requires raw materials, water, energy and manufacturing resources. When garments are discarded quickly, those resources can be lost even if the item has plenty of useful life left.

Reuse is generally the simplest way of keeping that value in circulation. A garment that can be worn again does not need to be broken down and manufactured into a new product.

For clothes that can no longer be worn, repurposing them as rags or industrial materials provides another option.

The Singapore-Malaysia partnership therefore creates a route for unwanted textiles to remain useful for longer rather than immediately becoming waste.

The bigger problem is what happens before the recycling bin

The growing volume also points to a limitation of recycling itself.

Sending 70 tonnes of clothes a week for sorting does not mean 70 tonnes of new clothing will be produced from those garments. A significant portion is resold or repurposed, while items with no viable use can still end up being incinerated.

The longer-term solution involves more than building larger collection networks.

Buying fewer unnecessary clothes, choosing durable garments, repairing damaged items and keeping clothing in use for longer can all reduce the amount that eventually reaches a recycling bin.

For Singapore, the partnership with Life Line Clothing offers a way to recover value from a huge stream of unwanted garments. But the bigger question remains: how can societies reduce the amount of clothing being discarded in the first place?