Overwhelmed, pressured, and facing costs that threaten to overwhelm them. This is the current situation in Catalonia for many organizations and companies, many in the third sector, dedicated to the selective collection and sorting of clothing and textiles deposited in designated containers for reuse. The sector is facing a twofold problem: on the one hand, a massive and ever-increasing volume of clothing and textiles complicates management at facilities across the country. On the other hand, there is the glut of secondhand clothing in international markets, where the sorted materials used to find a market. If they cannot sell, the management costs become unsustainable for these social enterprises.

In a warehouse on the outskirts of Sabadell, dozens of workers from the Fundació Formació i Treball (Training and Employment Foundation) rush to sort a constant stream of used clothing. Cotton shirts, sequined dresses, polyester sweaters, children's jeans. Each piece represents, in theory, a small act of solidarity and sustainability: a donation to "close the loop" of fast fashion. But the pace is frantic, the warehouses are full, and most of these garments, says Albert Alberich, founder and until recently director of Moda Re-, the Cáritas social cooperative specializing in textile recycling, "will end up in packages that will be shipped abroad." "The volumes are enormous; Europe simply doesn't have the sorting capacity to process them," he adds.

The textile reuse sector is at a critical juncture, as revealed by research published today by ARA. We spoke with Albert Alberich, founder of the social cooperative Moda Re- (Caritas), about its limitations, challenges, and potential solutions. How can we prevent the European system, which is meant to guarantee the reuse and recovery of tons of clothing, footwear, and textiles of all kinds, from becoming just another link in a global chain of environmental and social outsourcing?

France's crusade against Shein continues. The day after initiating proceedings to shut down the Chinese platform's website in France, the government launched an unprecedented operation this Thursday to detect the entry of products from the Chinese platform.ultra-fast fashion that do not comply with European safety regulations. The Ministers of Trade, Serge Papin, and of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, went to the customs area at Charles de Gaulle Airport to ask agents to open the 200,000 Shein packages that arrived in recent hours. Dozens of customs agents, all wearing gloves, opened the packages one by one in front of the ministers, searching for prohibited products. "The initial results show non-compliant and illegal products: unauthorized cosmetics, toys dangerous for children, counterfeit goods, and defective household appliances," De Montchalin stated. According to a study conducted by Belgian consumer associations, 70% of the products from platforms like Shein or Temu are illegal according to European standards.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has conducted a detailed analysis of the ecological impacts of new fashion consumption trends. He fast fashion and theultra fast fashion are a concern within the organization, according to Elisa Tonga, head of the Resources and Markets branch within the Industry and Economics Division of this UN agency. Her department, in fact, works to promote efficient use of resources in all industrial sectors, not just textiles, and Tonga also contributes her experience as former head of Production and Consumption at UNEP.

France has just enacted an unprecedented law to stop the unstoppable advance ofultra fast fashion, the final stage of the productive system of a fashion completely hijacked by hypercapitalism. If until now fashion had been positioned as the second most polluting sector on the planet,ultra fast fashion has managed to demonstrate that things can always get worse. These are mainly Chinese brands, led by Shein or Temu, which offer a purely online model, basing their offering on algorithmic detection of TikTok microtrends. The name of this production model is due to the record production and sales times, since while Zara requires 2 to 4 weeks between the design and sales phases, Shein does it between 3 and 7 days. The prices are extremely ridiculous, with a 30 to 50% discount compared to major clothing brands, thanks to an extreme violation of workers' rights. With ultra-accelerated production, uncontrolled consumption is promoted, since Shein puts 7,200 new products on sale every day, compared to Zara's 500 per month. Needless to say, theultra fast fashion It has a very high and worrying environmental and social footprint.