Second Life Without a Clear Record: Why Global Trade Data Struggles With Used Textiles

The study investigated whether the Harmonized System, the classification used to record international trade, can distinguish used textiles from new products.

A used carpet can cross a border under the same product code as a brand-new one, leaving anyone studying the records unable to tell them apart. That missing distinction makes it harder to follow what happens to textiles after their first owner finishes using them. Recycling plans and reuse targets depend on information that these records cannot always provide.

Researchers Md Hasan Al Mamun, Muhammad Shahjalal and Yaming Jiang examined this problem in "Blind Spots in Circular Economy Data Infrastructure for Sustainable Textile Management: End-of-Life Textile Products in Trade Statistics," published in Sustainability. The study investigated whether the Harmonized System, the classification used to record international trade, can distinguish used textiles from new products. They examined 157 product headings, analysed 450,872 UN Comtrade records covering 2013–2023, and used Eurostat data to assess the European Union market.

Product families without dedicated used or waste codes accounted for 26.5% of finished textile exports by weight in 2023. That figure describes the size of categories affected by a classification gap, rather than the amount of waste going unrecorded. The research shows how an ordinary detail in customs paperwork can limit our understanding of textile reuse, recycling and producer responsibility.

The Textiles That Lose Their Identity in Trade Records

The researchers graded product families on a four-level scale, from categories with a code naming the used or scrap product group to categories with no such code. Clothing, household textiles and headgear have access to a worn-articles category, and scrap rope and nets have another route. Yarn and fabric generally become identifiable as waste after processing into rags or fibre waste, and medical textiles have only a generic clinical-waste category for contaminated items.

Carpets, technical textile articles and a broad group of other finished goods, including sacks and tarpaulins, fall into the least visible category. Their used versions share headings with new products, and processing them into rags or fibres removes their original product identity. Even clothing coverage is incomplete because the worn-articles category requires appreciable wear and bulk presentation, leaving individually packaged second-hand garments under new-product headings.

The affected families represented 9.25 million tonnes out of 34.96 million tonnes of finished textile exports in 2023. Other finished articles contributed about 5.06 million tonnes, carpets 3.70 million and technical articles 0.50 million. Different definitions of finished textiles put the affected share between 20.3% and 39.7%, and the study's separate uncertainty estimate placed the headline figure between 22.7% and 35.3%.

Missing Weights Can Turn Growth Into an Apparent Decline

The affected families' share of finished textile exports rose from 24.0% in 2013 to 26.5% in 2023, with their export weight increasing by 24.6%. Products covered by the worn-articles category grew by 8.4% over the same period. The apparent faster growth depended heavily on a few large exporters and pandemic-related face-mask trade, so the authors could not establish it as a broader structural pattern.

China supplied 40.9% of exports in the affected categories in 2023, and the three largest exporters supplied 59.4%. The United States received 22.8% of recorded imports in these categories, and EU member states together accounted for 28.3%. These figures describe trade in the product families, without revealing how much was already used or where individual items eventually became waste.

Missing or unreliable shipment weights created another problem, large enough to reverse the direction of a measured trend. After estimating missing weights and correcting implausible figures, the researchers found that exports under the worn-articles and rags categories increased by 37.4%, compared with an apparent 5.6% decline when unusable records were discarded. Checks against importing partners' records and tests using deliberately hidden weights supported their approach, but the estimates remain vulnerable to selective non-reporting and differences between products.

Europe's Textile Responsibility Rules Leave Similar Gaps

The study estimated that the same poorly distinguished product families represented 26.4–29.0% of EU finished-textile consumption by weight in 2023, depending on the conversion method. Their share by value was about 13%, showing how a market dominated financially by clothing can obscure heavier textile products. Adding bedding, mattresses and absorbent hygiene products to the analysis increased the uncovered share to roughly half of consumption by weight, though these products contain substantial non-textile materials.

The researchers found that these families also sit outside the EU textile extended producer responsibility scope examined in the paper. Such schemes make producers responsible for financing or managing products after use, creating a practical connection between what gets counted and what receives funding. The boundaries run in parallel rather than one causing the other, and separate arrangements already cover some products, including textile sacks used as packaging.

The authors raise concerns about recycling plans based on incomplete supply information, collection costs falling on public budgets, and limited scrutiny of exports to countries with weaker waste-management capacity. These are proposed consequences requiring further investigation, rather than impacts measured by this study. The gap also complicates trade-based monitoring of progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 12, which concerns responsible consumption and production.

Better Tracking Needs More Than Another Recycling Target

The most immediate improvements are to explain how incomplete trade records are handled, check totals against trading partners' data, and flag categories whose used forms cannot be identified. The researchers propose more detailed EU Combined Nomenclature codes, building on an existing distinction between used and new jute sacks. Global classification changes would take longer, and the paper reports that the published 2028 Harmonized System amendments introduce no textile end-of-life subheadings.

Digital product passports could retain information about product identity, fibre composition, coatings and contaminants, provided the information remains accessible through use and sorting. Connecting those passports to used-textile export declarations would require additional obligations, and adding customs codes would not automatically expand producer responsibility. Carpets and mattresses could be considered for broader coverage, and industrial textiles may be better served by procurement take-back agreements or business-specific reporting arrangements.

Trade weights do not reveal product lifetimes, domestic disposal or the used share inside mixed categories. Its classification ratings follow legal texts rather than observed customs practice, and its EU weight estimates require conversions from production figures reported in other units. Better categories and more transparent data would give collectors, recyclers and policymakers a clearer starting point, with the costs and benefits of new requirements still needing practical assessment.