Since 2022, local circular fashion enterprise Cloop has been installing these bins – where people can conveniently drop off old clothes, bags, shoes, accessories and toys – around Singapore. The disposed textiles are then collected by its Malaysian recycling partner, Life Line Clothing, and shipped to a large warehouse in Selangor to be sorted into over 500 categories, from children’s clothes to “sexy shorts”.
These yellow bins, which have mushroomed from 60 in end-2022 to over 450 today, have diverted over 7 million kilogramme (kg) of textile waste from the landfill to be recycled, according to data provided by Cloop.
Of the 3.4 per cent, or about 7,000 tonnes, of textile and leather waste Singapore recycled last year, nearly half could be attributed to Cloop. On top of its yellow bins, Cloop has installed two white boxes to collect items that are in good condition for domestic circulation. These boxes, which are handled by the Cloop team and its army of over 300 volunteers, have additionally kept more than 44,000 kg of used garments in circulation, while channelling part of the proceeds from clothing swaps and sales to other social causes in Singapore.
Cloop’s co-founders Tan Yin Ling (right) and Jasmine Tuan (left) with one of their yellow recycling bins, where clean textiles in reusable condition can be dropped off. Image: Cloop
But Cloop co-founder Tan Yin Ling cautions against “unknowingly [calling] the exporting of textiles recycling,” which she understands is how Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) currently calculates the city-state’s textile recycling rates, as the agency as well as industry players cite the lack of domestic recycling capabilities. “Is it really an accurate figure? I’ll leave it to people to decide,” Tan told Eco-Business.
Recyclers have previously highlighted limited economies of scale as a key reason why there have not been strong investments in strengthening domestic textile recycling infrastructure. Singapore’s overall recycling system has also come under scrutiny recently, with its latest waste statistics showing that domestic recycling rate dipped to a new low last year. Industry experts told Eco-Business that confidence in the city-state achieving its 2030 waste targets has fallen, with some also questioning how the Singapore waste story is framed.
Singapore typically exports and resells its unwanted textiles overseas, including to developing countries where some of the clothes end up in secondhand markets. In 2023, a Reuters exposé revealed how donated shoes for a government-backed recycling initiative with petrochemicals firm Dow were found in a secondhand market in Indonesia, instead of being recycled into sports surfaces as claimed, undermining public trust in the transparency of the country’s recycling efforts.
Tan’s insistence to only work with transparent recycling partners, as she works towards the longer-term goal of doubling Singapore’s textile recycling rate, earned her a place on the Sustainability Leadership Youth A-List 2025, an annual award that recognises the region’s most impactful young sustainability professionals.
Under Tan’s leadership, Cloop launched its first textile sorting facility with social service agency APSN – a centre that provides vocational training to adults with special needs. After getting ad-hoc requests from students and artists for waste textiles for their projects, Cloop has plans to open a warehouse next month, where popularly requested materials – such as white shirts – will be made available for the public to access. Tan said this will help Cloop realise its vision of becoming a go-to resource hub for circular fashion in Singapore.
Malaysian artist duo CO2 repurposed pre-loved baby clothes and toys collected by Cloop for an artwork, which invites viewers to reflect on their own consumption habits. The artwork was showcased at Singapore’s National Gallery this year. Image: National Gallery
“Unfortunately, there has been so much consumption of textiles that even in the secondhand market, there is an overwhelming amount of textiles available,” said Tan. An influx of cheap virgin textiles – primarily from China – into the region in the past year has made it challenging for Cloop’s textile recycling partner to re-circulate items collected from its bins out into the global secondhand market, she shared.
“So instead of depending on our textile recycler, we are trying to bring the work back into Singapore by building more demand for secondhand clothing in Singapore,” Tan said.
In an interview with Eco-Business, Tan reflects on the uphill battle she and her co-founder Jasmine Tuan have faced trying to boost the national textile recycling rate, and her startup’s approach to providing solutions for democratising access to sustainable clothing and for lowering demand for fast fashion.
What drove the rapid scaling of Cloop’s bins islandwide and what more is needed to raise the country’s textile recycling rates?
I think it grew pretty quickly simply because it’s a service that is needed by everyone. The catalyst was the Covid-19 pandemic, because everyone was stuck at home. They were switching to home clothes and loungewear, and realised they didn’t need certain clothes anymore. We started just after the circuit breaker period, when everyone had already packed up their old clothes and were just looking around for somewhere to drop them off, apart from the Salvation Army which was already overwhelmed with donations.
Another reason is the partnership with our textile recycling partner Life Line Clothing which is based in Kuala Lumpur. Without them, we definitely could not have done this project. They had already established a collection system and also had a sorting facility in Malaysia. So without their backend support and an already practised system of putting bins out, we wouldn’t be able to do it.
Lastly, when we started to get the attention of certain town councils, NEA also started to support us and pushed the initiative to other town councils, where we could release a large number of bins.
How educated do you think the public is about textile waste and recycling? Has the momentum picked up since Covid-19?
They have definitely grown in knowledge since. We talk to people practically everyday and oftentimes, instead of us educating them about textile waste and over-consumption in fashion, they are the ones telling us about how they have changed their lifestyles and decided they don’t want so many things in their wardrobes. So there is that conscious shift. But in terms of the demand for textile recycling bins or donation drop-off points, it is still growing.
Even at our swap events, people are coming to ask where they can drop off their things – that’s the main question we get. They want a place where they can pass on the items knowing they will be properly reused or recycled.
Cloop conducting a workshop to turn old t-shirts into tote bags. Image: Cloop
What are some misconceptions about the sort of textiles that can be recycled?
Our textile recycling bins originally accepted textiles and apparels of all conditions, but we have changed it to items that are in usable conditions. Clothes, bags, shoes, accessories, household linens, like towels or bed sheets, stuffed toys or small plastic toys are all okay. The items go straight to our recycling partner’s sorting facility in Malaysia, where they are sorted into more than 500 categories by the type of clothing, the condition and sometimes the material. The priority would be for reuse – so about 50 per cent will goes into the international secondhand market.
For the other 50 per cent of items that are not reusable, our textile recycler has to deal with it in a sustainable way. So non-reusable, absorbent clothing gets stripped down into cleaning cloth for industrial use for the oil, petroleum or car industries. The soles of shoes that are not in reusable condition gets broken down into granules to make into sports or playground surfaces. 100 per cent polyester or cotton materials can be sent to India for stripping and for remaking into recycled products. Denim that is in good condition, but have broken buckles or zips can be upcycled into bags or pouches for reselling.
For the really jialat (hokkien for troublesome) items that we cannot save, they go into the waste-to-energy process for cement production in Malaysia, where the ashes go into the cement. To sum up, the whole process is zero waste to landfill. But everything after the reuse part is essentially either a net or money loss to my recycling partner, because he’s dealing with it in a sustainable way.
A lot of people have the misconception that clothes are easy to recycle. But to be very honest, the bulk of textile recycling is actually reusing. The ability to break an item down through mechanical recycling or chemical recycling depends on its material and condition. A lot of our clothes nowadays are made of a blend of materials – there is polyester mixed with cotton; sometimes the main piece is cotton, but the lining is elastic. It’s very complicated.
The most important part of textile recycling is the sorting process and being able to reuse the item as it is first. The technology behind textile recycling is – to be honest – very, very new. In Southeast Asia, I don’t think I know of an innovative textile recycling plant. This is also why we have changed [the collection criteria] from all conditions to usable conditions.
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A lot of people have the misconception that clothes are easy to recycle. But to be very honest, the bulk of textile recycling is actually reusing.
Do you think it’s possible for Singapore to raise its recycling rate for textiles and leather above 3 per cent without a domestic recycling facility?
I don’t know. Equating the export of textiles and leather to recycling [is not always accurate] because a lot of that is just reselling to another country and there could be instances when the reselling is not done in a responsible manner, and we are just exporting our waste to be dumped in a third world country. If we are doing that, I would rather the waste be incinerated, because we can deal with waste much better than other developing countries.
Just from a quick search online, you will find the negative environmental impact of the secondhand market. In Chile, there is a desert with a pile of discarded clothing so large it can be seen from space. I wouldn’t say Singapore is a huge contributor to it – the main contributors are still the Western market. But we need to be mindful of where we are sending our waste.
Was it the vision of Cloop from the start to ensure that doesn’t happen in your own supply chain? How do you ensure that?
This was something we learnt along the way from our textile recycler. My co-founder and I were just two ex-shopaholics wanting to provide sustainable shopping options for other ladies like us but when people started to pass us things that we couldn’t swap or sell, we didn’t throw anything away and ended up hoarding them. We sorted the items into what was still wearable and could be passed on as donations. For the stained items, we passed them on for upcycling projects.
We found partners to take these items. But at some point, they would tell us: “Enough.” This is especially so for the upcyclers as they only run workshops once every three months. There was quite a low uptake of the items that were not swappable or sellable.
That’s why we also started to talk to people who said they did textile recycling. We would ask them how they processed the clothes and a few were quite suspicious, because they just said: “We just sell them.” We chose not to work with them because they couldn’t tell us what they did.
We continued to hoard our items until early 2022 when our current textile recycler approached us. My co-founder had been to his factory a few years back when she was working in Malaysia. So when he approached us, we were very excited because he showed us the “behind-the-scenes” of recycling. It’s not very often that you come across a recycling company that would actually open up their backend operations to the public. It essentially means he has nothing to hide. So we jumped on it as we were on the same mission to at least double the textile recycling rate in Singapore.
What’s the proportion of textile recyclers out there in Southeast Asia that do this sort of more responsible recycling?
None! This is the only recycling partner that we have come across that deals with everything in a responsible manner. So it’s tough – textile recycling is not so simple.
It’s also been three years since you co-founded Cloop. How has your personal journey been so far – what are the challenges you have faced and what have you learnt?
Since October 2020, my co-founder and I have been running swap events alongside our full-time jobs. Something that we had to go through was tackling logistical and manpower issues, as we still operate as a pop-up event. Other struggles include space and rent, especially during peak periods like Chinese New Year, Christmas or the school holidays, when we get huge amounts of donations. In those periods, we really need to ramp up our logistics and space becomes a challenge, because we can’t stop donations altogether. We do need more space and space is not very cheap in Singapore. So that’s an ongoing struggle.
But we have built a community of over 300 volunteers. So in times of need, people have stepped up to help. Our small team of full-time staff came from our pool of volunteers.
For textile recycling, unfortunately, with all the fast fashion coming out from China, there are new things that haven’t even been sold that go straight into the secondhand market because they were made so cheaply. There is growing competition within the global secondhand market, meaning that secondhand clothing buyers are becoming very choosy about what they want to buy. That is why our textile recycler has to make sure his sorting is of a high standard so that he will be able to sell the items. That’s a global challenge we have no control over.
Ultimately, I want to bring textile recycling, which refers to the processing of the textiles, into Singapore so that we can have control over 97 per cent of textile waste generated.
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Unfortunately, with all the fast fashion that is coming out from China, there are new things that haven’t even been sold from certain brands that go straight into the secondhand market because they were made so cheaply.
How do you see Cloop’s work fitting into other areas of work – from tackling fast fashion to pushing for extended producer responsibility laws and the moving away from fossil-derived textiles – to make the fashion industry more sustainable?
A lot of things you mentioned are top-down decisions made by large corporations that, unfortunately, we cannot really control at this point. At Cloop, we believe a lot in ground-up movements and community. That’s why we always go around educating people about the problems with the fashion industry, while providing them an alternative place to shop at with our pop-ups in different locations.
That’s our approach: sharing, educating, then providing solutions. When we share with people who then go and share with other people around them, it creates organic knowledge sharing. And if we can spread the message far enough, will the demand for low-quality and super fast fashion items still be around in 10 years time? I don’t know. But if there is no demand, there is no reason to supply so much, right? I think that would be the way to show the big players that people want things to be done differently.
Cloop holds regularly holds fashion swaps in different locations islandwide and runs an honour system thrift store with curated pre-loved items in two permanent locations. Image: Cloop
Are there plans to go beyond Singapore?
I wouldn’t limit ourselves to just Singapore. But we still have a lot of work to do in Singapore.
It’s not only about providing more options. We do have a lot of charity stores in Singapore, like Salvation Army and New2U by Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO). But we also want to transform the way secondhand clothes are displayed to the public, so they look like a retail store.
A lot of our volunteers also volunteer with charity shops. We welcome them so they can learn [from us] and help the charity shops do better. Then as a community, we can show the public that second hand can be a mainstream option. We don’t want people telling us: “Oh, it’s so dirty, it’s so dusty, so low quality.”
What are the ways you want to see the textile waste problem solved in Singapore and in the surrounding region?
I want to see clothes of better quality. I’m not stopping people from buying new clothes. The thing is, “new” things today are of such low quality. They cannot be sold even if they come into our collection. It’s just immediately wasted.
I often hear people saying that sustainable clothing comes at a premium and they can’t afford it. Do you think that’s true? What would you say to them?
I would tell them, if you really want quality clothing then you need to pay the money it is worth. A lot of times, people choose to spend on variety rather than on quality. So essentially, they could be buying 10 pieces of [clothing of] different styles. But if they just buy one piece, they can afford that sustainable piece if they wanted to. So to me, it’s an excuse.
If they really want to talk about affordability, I will invite them to our swap event, because we only charge S$35 (US$27) for them to swap five pieces and take 10 pieces. If you think about it, it’s S$3.50 (US$2.70) per piece. And they might find a secondhand version of that sustainable item that they were looking at in our collection.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tan Yin Ling was one of the young sustainability leaders selected for the Eco-Business Sustainability Leadership Youth A-List 2025. Read our stories with the other winners here.
