French clothes bins open again with €49million government boost
Charity says its collections are slowly getting back to normal
Le Relais bins are one of very few places to recycle clothing
Henry Saint John/Shutterstock
A strike by one of the last organisations recycling old clothes and shoes from donation containers in France was called off after two weeks when the government stumped up €49million in cash.
Le Relais, which has links to the Emmaüs movement, said at the start of September that its collections were slowly getting back to normal.
Under the government aid scheme, Le Relais will be paid €223 per tonne of recycled clothes for the rest of 2025 and €228 per tonne in 2026.
Formerly, the price was fixed at €156 a tonne, and the government estimates the increase will total €49million.
In many parts of France, Le Relais is the only organisation still taking clothes for recycling.
For years the textile recycling industry in France, dominated by companies giving work to disabled people or to those coming out of long-term unemployment, relied on selling sorted clothes to Africa.
However, a combination of cheap ‘fast fashion’, which led to a decline in quality, and an increase in other countries also selling second-hand clothes to Africa saw a price collapse.
In France, the industry also received money from an organisation called Refashion, which was charged by the government to redistribute the recycling tax paid by clothes manufacturers.
It is these payments which the government has now agreed to raise.
In a press release, Le Relais said the payments were still “insufficient”.
It added: “Our calculations are that anything under €304 a tonne for sorted clothes means our business model will have to be resized.”
Le Relais currently employs 2,200 people, most of whom have come to the company through ‘social insertion’ routes.
It has previously said that it is working to expand alternatives to sending clothes to Africa, including branded second-hand shops under the name Ding Fring, and a business called Métisse to make insulation for buildings from cotton. Both have been slow to develop.
France does not have the same tradition of volunteer-run charity shops selling second-hand clothes, as found in the UK, while the uptake of recycled insulation is hindered by its costliness compared to traditional insulation materials such as spun glass fibre or rock wool.
Other resources
Bourses aux vêtements, held in many towns twice a year, are often a good source of high quality second-hand clothes.
Usually more structured than British jumble sales or US rummage sales, it is possible to find incredible bargains, including designer pieces. Most of the clothes on sale come from local association members and are outside the recycling bin circuit.
Events are usually advertised locally, with some departments printing leaflets listing all the Bourses aux vêtements in the area. A national website, bourse-aux-vetements.org, also provides listings but is not always reliable.
