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This collection has been built by a community of passionate researchers, students, and industry professionals as part of <a href="https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/" target="_blank">World Circular Textiles Day</a> (WCTD). 


World Circular Textiles Day takes place every year on 8th October.  Our vision is to galvanise the collective ambitions and goals of people, organisations and businesses to reach a fully circular textiles world by 2050. Our mission is to provide a framework for circularity stakeholders to develop and deliver a collaborative, evolving roadmap and to chart circularity’s momentum annually from the 8th of October until 2050.

What does fully circular by 2050 mean?
- Shared textile resources, in the form of products and raw materials, are kept in **continual circulation**.
- Virgin resources are **replaced with circular materials**.
- Dignity, equity, and equality for the **people** involved in all parts of the circular value chain.

We need to know where we stand today to chart how to get to 100% Circularity by 2050. What circular activity is currently happening in the textiles and apparel industry, and where in the world is it happening? The WCTD Collection aims to answer this question by building the world’s largest digital library of circular textiles case studies. 

World Circular Textiles Day is proud to be supported by our 2022-23 Circular Hero Partners:
[Lenzing](https://www.lenzing.com/), [Texaid](https://retailsolutions.texaid.com/), [Bank & Vogue](https://www.bankvogue.com/), [Usha yarns limited](https://ushayarns.com/), [The Conduit](https://www.theconduit.com/), and [Asia Pacific Rayon](https://www.aprayon.com/en/)

## Want to contribute to the WCTD Collection? Sign up and add your circular textiles activities.





World Circular Textiles Day

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Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Give products and parts another life after their end-of-use

Maximise lifetime of products after use

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Activities to clean, decorate, and restore products back to working condition for original or new purposes

Refurbishment, remanufacturing, renovation

Transforming waste products, materials for reuse within the same industry

Closed loop upcycling

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

Encourage workplace training

'Mobilise' sets the direction of and builds momentum towards long-term change, while also determining how this direction is determined and governed.

Mobilise

Visions and Ambitions

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

'Regulate' changes the rules of the systems to achieve compliance through enforcement. 


Regulate

Legislation

Bans

VISION:
Products and services are designed for multiple use and material value retention, with maximum positive impact.

DETAIL: 
Imagine a time when…products flow via optimal collection and distribution streams into reusable and repairable product platforms. Reuse and access models are dominant, and products are designed for multiple recirculation before biodegrading (if designed to do so), or being broken down into reusable raw materials for production. People only consume what they need. Production and consumption wastes have been fully eliminated and multifunctional, season-less and timeless fashions are the norm, yet still fulfil our human need for expression and creativity without constraint. All business models, organisations, governments and citizens play a role in maintaining a healthy, functioning circular ecosystem.

Products and Services

VISION:
People are valued and supported in an equitable, socially just and resilient society.

DETAIL:
Imagine a time when…people and communities are at the heart of any sustainable and circular system. The planet thrives, enabling us to survive with balance and abundance. People are no longer passive consumers, but proactive participants. The ‘makers’ who design, build, reprocess and recirculate products throughout the value chain are treated equally and are equitable partners in shaping and benefitting from the system. Textiles/garments can be produced and repurposed locally as well as centrally. A blend of craft methods alongside more automated production provides regionalised, multi-faceted perspectives and fulfilling livelihoods, be they high- or low-tech. Wealth gaps are minimised and dignity, equity, equality is a reality for all.

People and Society

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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27April 2022TextDaniel RodgersBUZIGAHILL: Return to Sender10 In 2015, Olly Holland, a human rights lawyer working in Nigeria, uploaded a photo of three women walking along a dusty roadside. Laden with trays of bananas, the central figure was dressed in a shrunken blazer and a scoop neck vest boasting ‘GINA’S HEN DO BLACKPOOL 2010’ in neon WordArt. “Proof that all charitable donations go a long way. Please retweet to help and thank Gina,” Holland captioned the now-viral image, which accrued hundreds of retweets before it was eventually deleted.
The assumption that this woman had benefited from some kind of Western altruism was unfounded, though. What Holland had captured was a much knottier second-hand clothing trade, where wealthy nations rely on African countries as waste disposal systems. In Accra, for example, some 15 million used garments pour into the city every week, with an estimated 40 per cent deemed worthless on arrival, flooding landfill sites while decimating local textile businesses. For designer and activist Bobby Kolade, who grew up wearing secondhand clothing “like everyone else” in Kampala, the guise of charity wears thin. “It’s complicated. When I lived in Berlin, I threw my unwanted clothes into clothing collection bins, not really knowing where they would end up,” he says. “But after all the research we did for our podcast Vintage or Violence, I realised how that act of easy disposal is an act of clothing terrorism.” In Uganda, 80 per cent of clothing purchases are secondhand, and despite producing high-quality raw cotton for the rest of the world, its own textile industry has failed to bounce back from the near collapse of production in the 1970s. “There is no local alternative to the diversity of style and choice that second-hand clothes provide”, Kolade says, which has proved a catalyst for his BUZIGAHILL venture, a new fashion label repurposing pre-owned garments bought in Uganda and selling them back to the Global North. “We have a ten year plan to build small, specialised factories spread out across the country, some for repurposing used garments, some for hand woven textiles, and some for artisanal production,” he explains, detailing his goal of revitalising Ugandan manufacturing at large.  Having interned at Margiela and Balenciaga, Kolade has been forced to “abandon the design processes [he] learnt in Paris” – though his tutelage is reflected back in all the rough-hewn tailoring, spliced sportswear, cut-and-paste graphics, and tactile seams which trace his debut collection, which drops today.  “We don’t work with moodboards and references. Our moodboard is each bale of clothing we unpack, the contents of which informs the design process,” he says, sourcing miscellaneous bundles of stock from clothing importers. “You’re relinquishing control over the general look of the collection so I’ve had to be flexible. One bale was particularly disappointing, though. It was labelled ‘NYLON TRACK PANTS’ but contained 80 per cent hideous jogging tights. We’re still figuring out what to do with them, we can’t return them.”
“The process is more reactionary than directional,” Kolade says, but BUZIGAHILL is hardly derivative, with the designer gesturing towards a set of elongated suit jackets, forged from old trouser legs and silk scarves originating from South Korea. “They look more like a tux, really, but they’re surprisingly very contemporary”. With the sale of those pieces, Kolade and his team will funnel profits into the Aiduke Clothing Research non-profit, “creating a link between artisans and designers so that more brands are using locally produced materials for their collections”. Ultimately, however, he knows that Uganda’s second-hand trade is symptomatic of a more pervasive belief system that dominates international politics.  “The comfort of colonialist consumption needs to be broken, we need radical, systemic changes. If people from a certain demographic believe they have the right to exploit people of a different demographic, then they need to revisit their constitutions,” he says. “My friends at The Or Foundation in Accra say that Big Fashion’s billionaire owners and CEOs should seek therapy to help them confront the mass dehumanisation of our industry brought on by their greedy decisions. And I agree.” 

In 2018, Bobby Kolade moved back to Kampala, Uganda — where he grew up — with a dream of creating a brand that used sustainably grown Ugandan cotton. Having been away for 13 years — making a name for himself in the European fashion world working for high-end brands like Balenciaga and Maison Margiela — his first priority was to engage with and learn as much as possible about Uganda’s textile industry.But, after a little research, he found that the country’s textile industry no longer had the capacity to support such an endeavor. In the 1970s, Uganda was producing 84,000 tons of cotton yearly and processing 85% of it for local consumption. Today, only 5% of Ugandan cotton is consumed by its own people, with the rest being exported in its raw form. Chief among the reasons for this decline in industry is the large-scale import of second-hand clothing from the Global North. Each day, millions of unwanted clothes from thrift stores and donation bins in Europe and North America land in cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Their low-cost and sheer abundance leaves little room for local designers in countries like Uganda to thrive. Even worse, the vast majority of these clothes are ultimately discarded, overwhelming African landfills with the waste of western nations. In Accra, Ghana, for example, 40% of the 15 million used garments that flood into the city every week are deemed worthless upon arrival.Responding to this crisis in his local fashion industry has been at the center of Kolade's work and research since he returned home. Between 2018 and 2021, he frequented major trade points like markets and boutiques, textile mills and even worked for two different cotton processing companies. The data that he compiled — alongside his research partner, Nikissi Serumaga — ultimately turned into a limited series podcast called Vintage or Violence.Released in 2021, the podcast brilliantly tells the story of Ugandan textile, the essential arm it has historically played in the nation's progress, and the sinister implications that the second-hand hand clothing trade has on youth unemployment, education, national morale, and Ugandan society at large. Photo Credit: Ian NnyanziAlongside this research, Kolade also inadvertently found himself at the helm of Aiduke, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering Ugandan fashion and textile practitioners. He had joined the Uganda Fashion Council as one of three directors responsible for sourcing funding for local fashion projects. But after two years of struggling to create exposure for their projects, the other two directors quit within weeks of each other, leaving Bobby alone at the reins.As he sees it, the council failed, mainly because it was a council — a foreign concept that didn’t work in the Ugandan context. He rebranded it as Aiduke Clothing Research and switched its focus to learning and experimentation. Their first project was a pop-up shop that ran from December 2021 to February 2022 in a corner of a Japanese restaurant in Kampala. It featured a mixed selection of vintage pieces with accessories and crafts by local designers. Kolade's latest act came with the launch of Buzigahill, a brand with a mission to “return Uganda‘s textile industry to the peak levels of the early 1970s, when more cotton was processed than exported.'' Their first collection, Return to Sender, responds to Uganda’s secondhand clothes crisis by “treating them like raw material.” They source bales of clothes from markets across Kampala, then combine and reconstruct them into distinctly new garments to be sold to customers in countries like the US and UK, from whence the discarded clothing first came. The collection further illuminates the devastating effects of the second hand clothing trade on countries in the Global South and points the conversation towards accountability by making western consumers reckon with the effects of their over-consumption. Following the success of their first drop, Buzigahill just released a second collection as part of the Return to Sender series.\u201cDROP 02 \n17TH AUGUST 2022 \n\n#buzigahill #returntosender #drop02\u201d — BUZIGAHILL (@BUZIGAHILL) 1660600606The collection embraces an elevated yet playful streetwear aesthetic with an emphasis on comfort. Each piece is unique to itself, but there is a prevailing spirit that all the garments embrace: multi-panel t-shirts made from pieces of other t-shirts stitched together; mis-matched hoodies; track pants partially fashioned from denim jeans; and elongated t-shirt dresses. We caught up with Bobby Kolade ahead of Buzigahill's second release to talk about his experience working in Uganda and his perspective on industry and community.Photo Credit: Ian NnyanziHow has the transition been since you moved back to Uganda in 2018?The first three years, I went through a series of disappointments because I realized that it wasn't going to be possible to do what I had come back home to do. Our industry is not as far as it needs to be in order to set up a brand with a diverse collection that can compete on a global scale. But that’s life in Kampala — a series of disappointments that you make work for you somehow, especially if you are trying to set up something in a professional manner. So, the transition for me was having to adapt into a designer who repurposes secondhand clothes.Along the way, so many beautiful things have happened and they overshadow the disappointments. The sense of community here is much stronger than I had in Europe. I feel like because of the scarcity of certain cultural activities, almost all the creatives stay on one side of town.What is the significance of the name Buzigahill?Buzigahill came about at the beginning of lockdown. I realized that all the people who inspire me — DJs, filmmakers, journalists, artists — all lived in this bubble that was on Buzigahill. One day, in our WhatsApp group, I joked that we all needed Buzigahill e-mail addresses. I love domain hoarding so I said, "you know what? Let me actually get e-mail addresses for everybody." So I bought [the domain name] and a couple of weeks later I registered the business.What has shocked you most over the course of your research?The biggest shock was the realization that we are in an industrial regression. I do not see any signs whatsoever that the cotton industry is going in the right direction. During my time here I've seen decline in industry [and] production. I've seen textile production decrease [and] cotton facilities shut down. That was bitter for me. I felt naive because I wrote so many pitches and I had this grand vision of a brand based around Ugandan cotton and it just couldn’t come to fruition.Our educational institutions are also not training people to produce clothing for global markets. There is no clear distinction between a tailor and a designer. You study fashion design for three years but at the end of the day, you end up sewing a few custom dresses for clients.Photo Credit: Ian NnyanziWhat is the distinction, for you, between a tailor and a designer?A tailor is a service provider for a designer (or a custom client). It's a craft. A designer spends time thinking about form, color, function markets people, culture, and not necessarily sewing.So you feel that so-called design institutions largely only equip people to do the technical work of creating the clothes and not necessarily the bigger picture thinking that it takes to be a designer?Absolutely! Also our textile knowledge is not to the standard it needs to be. I visited a textile university where they were still using manual sewing machines. We need to be using the latest technology. We need labs, we need people to be experimenting. The abundance of raw materials in this country is crazy but we're not using them to the extent that we could be [because] our institutions haven't modernized.What do you think about the rate of secondhand clothing being bought?I don't see secondhand clothes going anywhere. There are more and more shopping malls. More boutiques are opening up, run by people who purchase second hand clothes from markets and present them better and make it more comfortable for people who are not interested in going to Owino because of the hassle. We have imported a culture of overconsumption and ultimately it will lead to a culture of over disposal. People own much more than they used to in the past because these things are dirt cheap.Photo Credit: Ian NnyanziIn 2015, the member states of the East African Community pledged to ban the import of second hand clothing, but after the US threatened to revoke the African Growth and Opportunities Act, which gives African countries duty free access to export certain products to the US, only Rwanda ultimately followed through with the ban. Though it was tough at first, their local textile industry has since grown 83% between 2018 and 2020. Do you think that Rwanda’s success might influence Uganda to revisit those sentiments of 2015?What's the population of Rwanda?About 12 million.So 12 million people. Uganda has 47 million people today. Think that answers the question. I don't think our local textile industry is anywhere close to being able to cater to the demands of the market right now. Secondly, I don't think we have the same strength as Rwanda does when it comes to talking to the US. What I would like to see happen more is what Buzigahill is doing; embracing the fact that we have all these second hand and treating them as a raw material to develop our industry.If at some point raw material production, in terms of linen, silk, and cotton, does catch up and we can integrate them into the production systems that we've set up using secondhand clothes, then that is all well and good. But the key issue here is that African countries need to be treated as industrial resources, not just as a source of materials that need to be extracted.Tell me about your experience speaking at the Global Fashion Summit.There was a lot of talk. It was a lot of rich companies from the Global North telling us all the great things that they were doing. I went on stage and just said my truth and. It was well received but a part of me also felt like I was on stage performing a theatre piece. You kind of feel weird when people congratulate you for what you've said on stage because I wasn't performing anything. I was telling the truth. We have a serious problem and it remains to be seen if more African voices will be given the platform that I was given. Although it was the most diverse and youngest edition of the global fashion summit, there is [still] a lot of work that needs to be done and more voices need to be added to the conversation.The highlight for me was the OR Foundation announcing the EPR fund with Shein. Ghana has the biggest secondhand clothing market on the continent and they experience the [most] devastating side effects of clothing waste disposal. The OR Foundation signed an agreement with Shein to receive funds to alleviate the effects of second hand clothing in Ghana at Kantamanto market. It’s the first time that a fast fashion company has acknowledged the fact that their products are part of the problem on the African continent. It's a model that should be replicated by all the other huge brands: H&M, Nike, Adidas, Topshop, Primark — the ones that are suffocating our markets.Photo Credit: Ian NnyanziOther than upcycling, what ways do you think that designers can strive for sustainability in their work?Sustainability, for me, always comes down to the raw material. The most obvious thing is using natural fibers. We need to see more designers interact with local craftsmanship. I love it when I see a designer carry something that is considered artisanal and use it to make something contemporary that appeals to a youthful market. We don't need to be using fabrics imported from other countries. I don't want to see Ugandan politicians wearing three piece suits and a tie. It's ridiculous.How would you describe Kampala's sense of style? Do you think there is an essence that generally informs the way people dress throughout the city?No, I don't think so. There are many different scenes which don't really mix very well. Each borrows a lot from their counterparts in the Global North. In my opinion, the best dressed people in the city are the boda boda [motorcycle taxi] drivers. They have an understated sense of swag, mixing things up unknowingly. It's innate. You can find somebody wearing cowboy boots, Adidas track pants, a beanie, and then a really cool jacket. It's all over the place, but it's special. It's unique.Photo Credit: Ian Nnyanzi

When Bobby Kolade moved back to Uganda in 2018 after 13 years in the European fashion world, he was intent on joining the movement to ban secondhand clothes. The designer remembered buying used clothing at Uganda’s biggest market, Owino in Kampala, as a child, but had since learned about the damage this trade is doing to the environment and to African textile industries.“I see these clothes, and they offend me. I see white shirts with sweat stains and torn colours, and I feel oppressed,” says Kolade. “What does it say about whoever’s donating those clothes to us? And what does it say about our position in the world? It’s rude, you know? It’s really rude.”And yet today Kolade is launching a fashion brand made up entirely of repurposed secondhand clothing sourced in Uganda. Buzigahill is all about “redesigning secondhand clothes and redistributing them to the global north, where they were originally discarded before being shipped to Africa”.A label identifies the origin, source and care details of each garment in the Return to Sender range. Photograph: Ian Nnyanzi/BuzigahillKolade describes Return to Sender, Buzigahill’s first collection, as genderless, playful and raw. Each of the 250 pieces is unique, made from garments that have been cut up and artfully stitched back together. Prices range from $195 (£150) for four-panel T-shirts to $530 for extended coats. Each garment has a “passport” label identifying its country of origin and source.“The thing I enjoy most is the workmanship you can see. You can tell somebody sat down with scissors, cut something up, then put it back together somehow,” says Kolade, who has sourced the materials himself over the past year. Initially, this meant jumping on boda bodas (motorbike taxis) to visit the huge warehouses next to the maze of stalls at Owino, where he would buy clothing bales imported from countries such as the UK, Germany and Canada.Later, he built relationships with clothes importers who would deliver bales – from silk scarves made in South Korea to T-shirts from Canada and the US – directly to Buzigahill’s studio. Here, Kolade designs and produces the clothes along with his small team of tailors.Kolade describes the project as “reactionary design” to the overconsumption of the global north, and the role Africa plays as “a very effective waste disposal system for people’s clothes”. When clothes in the west are discarded at charity shops or donation bins, most are sold by export companies. According to Oxfam, more than 70% of clothes donated globally end up in Africa. Unable to compete with the price of used clothing, local textile industries across the continent suffer.Designs from Buzigahill’s Return to Sender collection. Photograph: Ian Nnyanzi/BuzigahillIn 2015, members of the East African Community (EAC) – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda – announced plans to ban secondhand clothing imports from their markets. But the US threatened to remove these countries from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which gives African countries duty-free access to export certain products to the US. Only Rwanda went ahead with a ban in 2018, and, despite severe sanctions, the country’s textile and garment sector is showing promise, growing 83% in value from 2018 to 2020.We’ve reacted to an economic and political situation to come up with something fun and accessibleBobby KoladeBut used clothes continue to flow into Uganda, and that’s what led Kolade to change his original vision of designing and producing clothes made in Uganda from Ugandan cotton, and for Ugandans.Initially grown using forced labour under British colonialism, Uganda has been producing cotton for more than 100 years. In the post-independence era, it had a thriving homegrown textiles industry. This deteriorated following Uganda’s tumultuous politics in the 70s, combined with economic liberalisation in the 90s which enabled secondhand clothing to become the lucrative industry it is today. With just two textile mills remaining, only 5% of Ugandan cotton is consumed locally, with the rest exported in its raw form.An image from the Vintage or Violence podcast series, co-hosted by Kolade. Photograph: Courtesy of Vintage or ViolenceThese topics are interrogated in Vintage or Violence, a podcast hosted by Kolade and film-maker Nikissi Serumaga, who is also making a documentary featuring Kolade. The podcast explores why secondhand clothes dominate African textile markets, and what impact this has on local economies and cultures.“International trade was designed such that, in a country like Uganda, our companies are not supposed to succeed,” argues Kolade. He and his team have faced multiple hurdles over the past year, including working on garments for weeks only for the fabric to disintegrate or stretch after being washed, and struggling to set up payment systems on their website. He says: “I am trying to set up a positive story here, to show that we’ve reacted to an economic and political situation to come up with something fun and accessible, but it is menacing.”He eventually managed to set up a PayPal account for Buzigahill, but services such as Instagram shopping are not available for Ugandan products. “If I ever read the phrase ‘not available in your country’, again, I will die!” But he adds: “When I’ve been completely frustrated at these processes, I’ve had to have some compassion, and to understand that what we’re doing is actually quite absurd [sending secondhand clothes back to the global north]. For me as well, this isn’t what I always intended to do.”‘We have an opportunity to start really thinking about the recycling, upcycling, repurposing industry’: Kolade in Kampala, Uganda. Photograph: Ian Nnyanzi/BuzigahillKolade is half-German, and could have dodged some of these challenges by setting up his company in Europe and distributing the clothes from there. “But that’s not the point. If we are dedicated to value addition in Uganda, then I want the funds to come directly to Uganda, and I want us to set up the systems.”He is passionate about Ugandan-made products, and has set up a non-profit called Aiduke, which promotes Ugandan fashion products to the local market, with the aim of expanding into global markets.Buzigahill has a 10-year plan to build small, specialised factories across Uganda, not only for repurposing used clothing but also for hand-woven textiles and artisanal production, and Kolade hopes to expand to neighbouring countries too.“We have an opportunity here to start really thinking about the whole recycling, upcycling, repurposing industry, as opposed to only focusing on raw materials,” he explains.“Waste has already become a commodity, but it’s going to become an even more important one. So the sooner we’re able to create industries using this waste as a commodity, the more progress we’re going to make as a region.”Sign up for a different view with our Global Dispatch newsletter – a roundup of our top stories from around the world, recommended reads, and thoughts from our team on key development and human rights issues, delivered to your inbox every two weeks:Sign up for Global Dispatch – please check your spam folder for the confirmation email

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We redesign second-hand clothes and redistribute them to the global North, where they were originally discarded before being shipped to Africa.

Buzigahill

<p>Buzigahill was founded in 2022 by Ugandan designer Bobby Kolade. The local Ugandan textile trade has struggled since the 1970s due to the influx of low price secondhand goods from the Global North. Along with an economic impact, a large proportion of the donated clothes are worthless and will ultimately clog up landfills, resulting in environmental and health implications. Buzigahill’s mission is to challenge Uganda’s position as a textiles waste bin, revitalising manufacturing by using waste as a commodity to upcycle garments, and selling them back to countries, where the clothing came from. This, in turn, will create decent and dignified employment.&nbsp;</p>