How a Belgacom overall in Ghana exposes the unsustainable processes of the textile sector

“Maybe I think something of you?” This is the best way to translate the reaction of the official I stared at in Accra. At first glance, the answer may be ‘yes’. The municipal garbage collector does not wear a city uniform, but an apple blue sea green outfit with the striking and recognizable Belgacom logo.

The official briefly tells me that he was able to find the room and allows me to quickly take a photo. Belgacom man, that’s what I call him for lack of a better pseudonym. Long after my visit, the question remains: how did that uniform end up more than 7,000 kilometers away in Accra? And I decide to investigate like a true vintage Sherlock Holmes.

Second Life

“It is not unusual for companies to want to give old clothing a second life after a name change. At Proximus, the rule is that this is only possible outside Europe,” says Fabrice Gansbeke when we call him. He is a spokesperson for Proximus, Belgacom’s new brand name since 2015. “Only if the brand logo is removed can the clothing be reused anywhere. But of course it is difficult to remove logos without damaging the clothing. Although we search for better solutions, today all branded clothing destroyed as soon as employees hand in their old uniforms.”

Not exactly environmentally friendly or sustainable, but neither surprising, according to experts. “Public safety is the reason why a lot of work clothing is destroyed after use,” says Bart Vervaecke, CEO of Sioen, one of the best-known work clothing manufacturers in our country. Sioen not only produced for Belgacom, but also has contracts with utilities, the police, the fire brigade and the army. After incineration, an official and signed destruction certificate is drawn up, stating ‘destruction by coincination’. “In this way we fully guarantee that our uniforms will not end up in the wrong hands.”

“Clothes are a form of identification, through a uniform you can gain access to, for example, the homes of older people,” says Nico Kimpe, sales manager at Vanheede Environment Group, one of the waste processors with whom Sioen collaborates. “Unfortunately, older people can easily be fooled with an excuse. We are not only responsible for the destruction of the most sensitive uniforms, such as those of Defense, but also those of the services sector. Especially since 9/11, we have been receiving more and more demand for this.”

Vervaecke: “We even have to pay to destroy clothing. But I’d rather have that than the alternative: I can’t bear to think about a robbery being committed tomorrow in police clothing that we have produced. Although it is of course always possible for an officer to take three uniforms home with him after retirement. Then we no longer have control over them and they may end up in the second-hand circuit.”

To sort

Would the Belgacom man have lost his uniform in this way? Second-hand collectors regularly receive discarded work uniforms. Then it is important to sort them out, says Johannes Eneman, responsible for textiles at Oxfam. At the sorting belt in Haren, Eneman shows me army uniforms with the name plaque still attached. “Is that from someone who is retired, or has that man died?” As a rule, they do not end up in second-hand stores, although it can still happen. “We once got the police on our roof because we sold a bulletproof vest in one of the branches.”

According to Vervaecke and Gansbeke, there is a good chance that the Belgacom uniform in question ended up in Ghana by chance in a similar way, via the usual second-hand channels. But what about all those other uniforms? How does work clothing fare if chance does not interfere?

Leader in Europe

In Ghana, a country with 31 million inhabitants, 15 million pieces of old clothing arrive every week. In North-Western Europe alone, we throw away 5.2 million tonnes of textiles every year. Belgians dump an average of 60 items of clothing per year, making them the leaders in Europe. Our country exports second-hand goods worth about 2 million dollars to Ghana every year. It is estimated that around half ends up in a waste heap or in nature. In the rainy season, the monsoon drags that clothing towards the sea, with all the ecological consequences that entails: the Ghanaian beaches are full of sweaters and uniforms, which ironically the Belgacom man helps to clean up.

Inquiries reveal that the Belgacom man’s uniform was made by a company that no longer exists: called Stabyl. The current Proximus uniforms are largely produced by Belconfect. Most uniforms appear to be made of a mix of cotton and the synthetic material polyester – according to Edwin Maes, textile consultant at Centexbel, “under price pressure”. A report by Centexbel, VITO and the German Ecologic Institute shows that these types of mixed substances are not a valuable input to give clothing a second life: you cannot mechanically recycle them.

“It is the customer who determines which substances they need,” says director Filip Lietaer. Belconfect also hides behind its customer when it comes to the final destination of the clothes. “We are not responsible for what happens to clothes after use.”

Incinerator

Proximus collects old uniforms and relies on waste collector and processor Renewi to destroy them. At the request of Proximus, many uniforms disappear into the incinerator, Renewi innovation manager Philip Heylen admits, although he wants to emphasize how much the company is committed to recycling. DestraTotaal, a subsidiary of Renewi in Breda, wants to be able to mechanically recycle “data carriers” – company jargon for, among other things, uniforms with logos. To do this, it puts the uniforms in a shredder – think of a paper shredder, but for clothing. “This leaves you with strips of textile that are unrecognizable.”

But in practice, the recycling options of that subsidiary appear to be rather limited, Heylen emails. “It remains a challenge to remove logos while ensuring that the rest of the garment is still intact and functional. We work together with external partners for creative solutions.” For example, it sends organic content (including clothing, with the exception of synthetic textiles such as polyester) to an Israeli company that processes 120,000 tons of waste from the Benelux every year.

Mandatory sustainability

More and more companies are looking for solutions to give work clothing a second life without compromising safety risks. If work clothing is disguised or reduced in size, producers also receive a certificate that the uniforms have been destroyed, says Sioen CEO Vervaecke.

Shredding and cutting is in principle downcycling, because it usually ends up in low-value applications such as insulation, sound insulation and car upholstery. For high-quality applications, again, that logo gets in the way. That is why CWS decided to embroider emblems, to make them easier to remove later, instead of printing or ‘patching’.

The company outsources this labor-intensive task to its own central warehouse in Poland, due to the proximity of recyclers in Poland and Germany and the interesting labor costs. For example, it makes T-shirts from discarded work clothing.

However, many uniforms disappear as cleaning cloths, again a form of downcycling. This has to do with stains, wear and tear and the composition of clothing. “Clothes made from 100 percent cotton are easier to recycle in high quality, but break down more quickly and are not comfortable during intensive work,” says Nauwelaerts. “We usually choose (more difficult to recycle, ed.) blends, for example a mixture of Fairtrade certified cotton and recycled polyester.”

Government services are also focusing more on making work clothing more sustainable. “It is our explicit instruction not to reuse the clothing in its original condition,” says Defense, “but the bulk of the collected clothing can be recycled as high-quality as possible.”

Blanket order

For government clothing itself, the Ministry of Civil Service will soon come up with a large framework contract, “with a clear focus on sustainability and reuse”, reports a spokesperson. “This means that a supplier will only be able to win a government contract if the work clothing of government employees is made sustainable and the discarded materials are given a new life.”

Desrumaux (Xandres) confirms the latter. “We notice this change about three years ago. If you compete for public tenders, you must provide an end-of-life solution, otherwise you will not win the contract.” Segers from Belconfect notes that not every government service is equally committed to this. “In these times of savings, price remains a decisive argument, even for cities and municipalities that are strong with their sustainable purchasing policy.”

Change

The turnaround seems to have begun. For example, Centexbel is working with the Dutch workwear company Groenendijk on the interregional European project Circtex, in which uniforms are dismantled for high-quality recycling. Circtex uses a sewing thread from the Dutch company Wear2Go, which melts when irradiated with microwaves: this way a work suit falls apart and you can separate the reflectors from the components that are easier to recycle. Sioen has also recently started working with sewing thread that can melt, this time under high temperatures, from the Belgian scale-up Resortecs.

The Dutch Gaia Circulair also recycles old work clothes, they work together with a German fiber company to give clothes a second life. “We recently had blouses from Proximus here,” says director Marcel Franssen on the telephone. They sell the recycled textiles to a German car brand, which is looking for yarn for their seat covers. Specific white yarns are required for this, making Proximus’ white blouses particularly suitable.

The blouses arrived on pallets that also contained work clothes from Vodafone, director Franssen knows. But he cannot find the distributor via their online platform. “It is not important where it comes from, but where it goes.”

He does not work with Proximus, and the clothes do not come from Renewi – although a supplier of Gaia Circulair – either. Gansbeke and Heylen also cannot tell me how a pallet full of blouses ends up in North Brabant, while they actually had to be destroyed. “Although we are certainly positive about the principle of reusing textile fibers, as long as it is unrecognizable,” Gansbeke emails me.

In any case, it seems like good news: those Proximus blouses did not end up straight into the incinerator. Converting work clothing into car upholstery is also a form of downcycling, but at least the clothing is not destroyed.

And so it could well be that when you jump into your car after reading this article, you will simply find yourself wearing a Proximus uniform. But that uniform has also undergone a real crusade to Ghana.