Surrounded by the acrid smell of garbage, I stand in the middle of the Dandora landfill in autumn 2021 and gaze at a superb suede shoe by Yves Saint Laurent under the burning sun. How did it get here? I take a look at the seemingly endless, as if self-created, landfill, and realise – here lies the one possible finale for haute couture design. In our consumption-oriented culture, it is still shocking to see that our beloved items become trash. We are unaware of where the things we no longer need end up. As a New York lawyer once said when I asked him if he knew where his hometown trash went: “Out of town on the train.” Indeed, we pick up things from store shelves, and when we no longer need them, they disappear from our lives. But how do they wind up on store shelves and where do they go afterwards? Why don’t we think about it?

It is quite unexpected to meet what we in our consumer society consider quality design in Sub-Saharan Africa, in a Nairobi dumpsite.

I have visited this place around 20 times within the last ten years. During this period, almost nothing has changed – huge factories and endless mountains of textile waste towering all around. Children and dogs climb on top of these piles, triumphantly conquering them. Textile waste goes mouldy and produces aromas that you cannot easily forget. In a few days, your own sweat starts to smell similar. It’s code red for air pollution, the noise is deafening. The coloured wastewater flows directly from the factory into the Buriganga river.

Only one factory among all the factories in Gazipur has engaged in industrial upcycling. This means that a part of the excess materials finds its way back into the production. Unfortunately, it really is only a part and only one factory. The global brands that manufacture in Gazipur and who own these excess materials are not lifting a finger to improve the situation. As the brands are the ones who have the sales channels and the money – meaning also the decision-making power – the factories in Bangladesh can only become more sustainable and circular if they engage in close collaboration with those who commission from them. The brands are not interested in that, however. Depending on the size of the factory, the textile waste generated in the clothing industry is 25–40% of the total fabric used. If desired, it would be possible to reuse 50% of this material using the upcycling method to make new clothes, for certain types of waste, or to even reuse up to 80%. The rest can be successfully recycled. However, the brands we buy from our nearby shopping centres refuse to see fabric as a valuable material as it is an extraordinarily inconvenient and complex problem that is also far away enough to be successfully ignored. Solving the problem would require these companies to change their design and manufacturing strategies – that means changing their entire business strategy, which they are not ready to do.

In this video, you can see how the arrow T-shirt conceived by my brand is made using the industrial upcycling method in a factory called Beximco in Bangladesh. This is one example of how excess materials from factories could be used to manufacture new products. Making a shirt from existing material helps save water and reduce the energy required for production, while limiting waste generation. The arrow shirt has been in production for nine years and continues to be the brand’s best-selling product. One T-shirt saves 99% of water and 86% of CO₂ compared to a T-shirt made of new fabric.

In order to change the current processes, it is necessary to shed light on the entire life cycle of an individual product. It is important not only to know where we produce something, but also how we do it. Is the product designed in a way that it avoids waste? There is quite a big difference if the efficiency of the product’s cut pattern is 45% or 94%, and this in turn is a matter of design. How much fabric is left over in production and how is this recycled? What recycling techniques are used and what do the supply chains of large corporations look like? How can we avoid the environmental damage induced by manufacturing and waste generation? Would it be possible to reach such a collaboration between the brand and the manufacturer that would provide solutions to problems, instead of aggravating them?

Bangladesh, where the locals wear mostly culturally traditional clothing (sari, kurta or lungi), exported garments worth 42.613 billion US dollars in 2022. This made Bangladesh the second largest apparel exporter in the world after China (Export Promotion Bureau). At the same time, approximately 5.8 million tons of textile products or approximately 11 kg per person are stockpiled in the European Union each year (European Environment Agency). Estonia is one of the small European countries where production processes have long since moved out, and concerning the life cycle of the product, we are strongly engaged in consumption, having reached the same level as the Nordic countries in terms of purchase quantities.

Is an item that ended up in the trash a reproach to the designer? Proof of the designer’s downfall? Standing on top of the Dandora landfill, which had recently swallowed an entire large excavator, I am struck by the sad realisation that we are very skillful at producing garbage. We produce things that have no value. For some reason, however, we refuse to admit that it is not only a problem concerning waste, but an inability to create and market long-lasting, high-quality manufactured products according to circular principles. For decades, we have educated designers who create aesthetic value, but not enough of them are aware of circular design or the life cycle of the product. And how could they know any better considering that in their studies they have never been taught how the large-scale industries work or where this unrenowned Kenya is where we send our used items? It is necessary to make a connection between the endpoints of the product’s life cycle in order to create a big picture. Both the factories in Bangladesh and the landfills in Kenya are separated from our European welfare state by just a few hours on a plane, yet sometimes it seems they are situated on another planet.

Who should take responsibility for the current situation, responsibility for the people of Nairobi who find before them not store shelves that are overstocked, but landfills full of items, created by the same highly educated designers? Who should be held responsible for the environmental damage, social problems, loss of heritage and climate change? Before ending up in the landfill, every item has gone through the design, product development, sampling and manufacturing phases, and then found its way through the purchase and sale transaction to the user who at some point discards it. It’s no secret that the global industry goes together with a multitude of problems that we generally ignore. The opacity of linear supply chains, the vast environmental damage induced by manufacturing, the underpayment of workers and the huge profits of large corporations only benefit from our indifference.