A garment does not become circular simply because it enters a collection bin.
Nor does exporting it establish that it has been reused.
Between collection and final treatment lie sorting, transport, resale, repair, recycling and disposal decisions. Some garments retain useful value. Others create waste-management costs in the countries that receive them.
This is the challenge addressed by the new Apparel Recovery Coalition.
Adidas, H&M Group, Inditex and Bestseller have launched the initiative with Ghana-based nonprofit The Or Foundation. Circle Economy also supports the coalition.
According to ESG Dive’s 9 October report, the programme will run for two years and develop and test a producer-responsibility business model that reflects global post-consumer textile flows.
Its first demonstration project will be based in Accra, Ghana. The programme intends to support infrastructure improvements, environmental remediation and training, with another project planned in a country receiving substantial volumes of secondhand clothing. The participating brands will make voluntary financial contributions.
The initiative is worth watching.
But a coalition launch is an input—not evidence of circularity achieved.
The appropriate test is whether the programme improves material outcomes and reduces environmental and social burdens in the places where clothing actually ends up.
Why destination markets matter
The coalition was unveiled at Kantamanto Market in Accra.
The Or Foundation estimates that the market recirculates around 25 million garments each month. That is an attributed estimate, not a independently verified material balance. Nevertheless, it illustrates the importance of destination-market
infrastructure to global textile flows.
Reuse, repair and resale already depend on the labour, expertise and businesses operating in these markets.
A producer-responsibility model that measures only what happens in the exporting country risks overlooking that work. It may also overlook the cost of handling items that cannot be sold or repaired.
The relevant boundary is therefore broader than a brand’s collection scheme.
It should follow materials through the system and identify both retained value and residual waste.
Collection, recovery and recycling are different outcomes
Circularity reporting frequently compresses several activities into one headline figure.
A tonne collected may subsequently be:
Resold for further use.
Repaired before resale.
Converted into another product.
Recycled into fibres or lower-value applications.
Held in storage.
Exported for further sorting.
Sent for energy recovery or disposal.
These outcomes should not be treated as equivalent.
A credible programme should identify the destination and treatment of each material stream, as far as reasonably possible, rather than using collection as a proxy for final recovery.
A proposed mass-balance framework is:
Minput=Mreuse+Mrecycling+Mother treatment+Mdisposal+ΔMinventory+Munresolve
The categories must be defined to avoid double counting. Unresolved quantities should remain visible rather than being assigned an assumed circular destination.
This framework does not demand perfect traceability on day one. It demands transparent treatment of incomplete evidence.
What the coalition is trying to test
The Apparel Recovery Coalition intends to examine how producer-responsibility systems can support reuse, recycling, upcycling and responsible waste management in countries receiving exported secondhand clothing. It also states an intention to embed community perspectives in governance, design and implementation.
This matters because conventional producer responsibility can become administratively centred on the market where a product was first sold.
International textile flows create a more difficult question: how should funding and responsibility follow a garment across borders?
The coalition is a voluntary demonstration initiative, not proof that this question has been resolved or that a binding regulatory system is already in place.
Its value will depend on the evidence produced.
Funding should follow the burden—not only the material
Material traceability is only part of the assessment.
The financial boundary matters too.
If brands finance collection but receiving markets bear the cost of unusable garments, the system may improve collection statistics without improving waste outcomes.
A useful evaluation should therefore ask:
How much funding reaches destination-market activities?
Which operating and capital costs does it cover?
Is funding predictable enough to maintain infrastructure?
Who decides how funds are allocated?
Are repairers, traders, sorters and affected communities represented?
How are environmental remediation outcomes measured?
What arrangements remain after the pilot ends?
These are proposed evaluation criteria. ESG Dive reports the brands’ commitment to voluntary contributions, but the retrieved article does not establish the full funding amounts, cost coverage or long-term financing arrangements.
Those details should become central to future assessment.
Community participation is an operating requirement
The coalition’s intention to incorporate community perspectives should be tested through decision-making arrangements, not consultation counts alone.
For a destination-market programme, practical governance questions include:
Who has authority over project priorities?
Can affected participants challenge decisions?
Are programme benefits and burdens documented?
Are local enterprises supported rather than displaced?
Can participants access relevant performance information?
Is there an accessible process for complaints and remedy?
These questions matter commercially as well as socially.
Infrastructure and logistics programmes depend on the participation of the people who operate them. Ignoring that knowledge can undermine implementation even when the equipment or financing is sound.
Recycling claims need evidence of displacement
Recycling can produce useful materials. But a quantity sent to a recycler is not necessarily the same as an equivalent quantity of virgin material displaced.
A robust assessment should distinguish collection weight, processing input, usable output and the application of that output.
For a proposed lifecycle comparison, evaluators should examine:
Sorting and processing losses.
Energy and chemical inputs.
The quality of the recovered output.
Transport between processing stages.
The product or material being substituted.
Whether substitution is demonstrated or assumed.
The same discipline applies to reuse. Environmental benefits depend on the additional service delivered and the comparison scenario—not simply the fact that a garment changed hands.
This is an analytical recommendation, not a quantified claim about the coalition’s present performance.
More recovery does not resolve production growth
ESG Dive places the launch against continuing scrutiny of the brands’ production footprints.
It reports that Inditex used 705,554 metric tonnes of raw materials in its products, compared with 678,596 tonnes in 2024. It also reports that H&M produced 364,093 tonnes of products in 2025. These are different metrics and should not be used to rank the companies directly.
They do, however, highlight an important assessment question.
Can recovery and waste-management capacity keep pace with the material entering the system?
A company can improve a recovery percentage while total residual waste still rises.
Circularity evaluation therefore needs both relative indicators and absolute quantities.
Useful disclosures would include:
Material placed on the market.
Material collected.
Verified reuse and recycling outputs.
Residual disposal.
Changes in product durability.
Destination-market funding.
Uncertainty and unresolved flows.
Recovery initiatives should complement measures addressing product design, durability and material demand—not replace them.
What a successful pilot would demonstrate
At the end of the two-year programme, the strongest evidence would be more than participation numbers or case studies.
It would show:
A documented baseline for relevant textile flows and waste burdens.
Measured changes in reuse, recovery and disposal.
Transparent financial contributions and their deployment.
Evidence of local participation in governance.
Environmental outcomes from infrastructure and remediation.
A replicable business model with identified limitations.
A credible plan for continued funding and accountability.
Not every outcome will be easily quantified. That makes methodological disclosure more important, not less.
Circularity is a destination-level outcome
The Apparel Recovery Coalition recognises a consequential issue: producer responsibility must account for what happens after clothing crosses a border.
Its success should be assessed where the garments are sorted, traded, repaired and ultimately managed.
Collection is the beginning of the evidence chain.
Circularity is the outcome that chain must demonstrate.