(3 Minutes Read)
Social enterprise group Africa Collect Textiles (ACT) is the epitome of a social enterprise that takes the lead in recycling textile waste. Enterprises are mostly driven by women.
Africans are learning how to tackle textile waste, which poses an environmental challenge. They adopt the process of upcycling, where poor-quality, discarded clothes are made into desirable products. In some countries like Kenya and Nigeria, these concepts are catching up and may soon spill over to other countries as well.
Social enterprise group Africa Collect Textiles (ACT) is the epitome of a social enterprise that takes the lead in recycling textile waste. Enterprises are mostly driven by women. For instance, in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, women collect textile waste and create something new. Materials for that are abundant as the East African country imports around 200,000 tonnes of used textiles each year. Most of them are discarded in the first instance itself and are used mostly as landfills, where it takes years to decompose. When decomposed, the materials release toxic ingredients like methane, which gets mixed up with groundwater.
ACT has tailored its activities to end the slow poisoning of its environment. Operating in both Kenya and Nigeria, it says the problem is that many developing countries lack the infrastructure to dispose of textile waste in an environmentally friendly way. ACT has set up collection bins in high-traffic areas like malls and universities where people can easily dispose of old clothes. These are collected and sorted in the workshop according to their quality and wearability.
Many of the products produced by ACT are sold at The Artisanal Gallery in Nairobi, co-founded by Crista Victoria Mehta. This has two beneficial effects, apart from protecting the environment. One, the social enterprise helps bring revenues to people, particularly women who collect discarded rags. Two, it instils creativity among women who churn out various products from the waste, including new garments.
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Textile waste is an urgent global problem. Only 12% of discarded textiles worldwide are recycled, and the rest are used in other products, including accessories for kitchens, toys, etc.
