Prices paid for recycled textile materials have weakened. One textile recycler had to stop exporting material to Nigeria due to the February 2019 elections and legislative change. This, mixed with trading implications tied with Brexit, meant the business was forced to drop prices by around 30 to 40 per cent. Nigeria has introduced legislation banning third-party payments. However, there was a surge of used clothing and textiles for recycling in August and into September.

The real impact however will be in November, if recyclers still have a lot of material that they can’t get rid off by Christmas. The excess material, coupled with a decline in demand from export markets, has led some in the field to stop collecting from shops, where they are not tied into a contract, and have also forecast a possible market crash, as was seen earlier this decade.

While there is always a plethora of reasons prices fall, an ongoing reason is a surplus of unsorted clothing. There is simply too much of it, which is unsorted. There has been a retraction in sorting operations. There used to be 150 grades, which has now dropped, and that could show people are exporting lower grade material, and there is simply more available, which lowers the price.