Used Clothing Import Rules Changed in 2026: Uganda’s 30% Levy, EU Waste Law and China Export Checks

Published 30 September 2026 · Regulatory analysis for used clothing importers

On 1 July 2026, Uganda began collecting a 30% environmental levy on imported used clothing. In the same period, the European Union put rules in force that treat separately collected textiles as waste before they are professionally sorted, and Chinese customs authorities began asking exporters of used garments for documentary proof that the destination country actually requires the cleaning and disinfection they claim to have performed.

Three governments, three different instruments, one direction. For importers the useful question is not whether the used clothing trade is under pressure — it clearly is. The useful question is which of these changes touches your landed cost today, and which are still only proposals. This article separates the two.

📋 What Changed in 2026 — At a Glance

🇺🇬 Uganda’s 30% Environmental Levy on Used Clothing

What the levy actually is

Uganda’s External Trade (Amendment) Act 2026 passed in April 2026 and took effect on 1 July 2026. It adds a 30% environmental levy assessed on CIF value. The detail that matters most is structural: the levy sits inside the VAT base, so it compounds rather than simply adding 30 points.

The full stack on a container of used clothing now reads:

• 35% import duty
• 30% environmental levy (on CIF, and included in the VAT base)
• 18% VAT
• 6% withholding tax
• 1.5% infrastructure levy
• 2% import declaration fee

Stacked, that is roughly 93–95% of CIF value in tax, before a single freight or clearing charge. The comparison that makes it concrete: Ugandan budget analysis published by PwC Uganda puts a 40-foot container landed in Kampala at approximately US$41,840, against US$30,832 landed at Mombasa — 36% more for identical goods.

Two duty methods, one container

There is a second uncertainty in Uganda that matters more than the levy itself for day-to-day quoting, because two duty methods are in circulation at the same time:

1. The EAC Gazette method. The EAC Gazette of June 2026 (EAC Vol. AT 1 No. 16) places Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania on a stay of application, levying the CET rate of “35% or US$0.40/kg, whichever is higher” as a flat 35% for one year.
2. URA practice. Uganda Revenue Authority has applied specific duties per kilogramme — reported at US$0.89/kg for used clothing, US$1.41/kg for used footwear and US$2.34/kg for used bags.

These are not the same number. On a dense bale of footwear, the gap between the two methods can approach a factor of two. Traders challenged the per-kilogramme approach in 2024 as inconsistent with the EAC Customs Management Act and the EAC Customs Valuation Manual; the commitment to move to invoice value has not yet been implemented.

Ask your clearing agent, in writing, which method applies to your consignment before you quote a price. In the current Uganda trade this is the single highest-value question you can ask.

Why Uganda chose a levy instead of a ban

Uganda’s approach is genuinely unusual and worth understanding, because it tells you what to plan for. Rather than prohibit mitumba, the government has said publicly that it intends to make the trade “systematically not viable instead of banning” it. President Museveni has used far harsher language about imported used clothes — but no ban has ever followed the rhetoric, and the 2016 EAC gazette asking member states to phase out used textiles and footwear by 2019 was never enforced in Uganda.

The reason is arithmetic. Uganda is Africa’s fifth-largest importer of used clothing, accounting for roughly 6.3% of the continental total, importing about 80 million kilogrammes in 2023. Mitumba supplies close to 80% of national clothing demand, and Owino market alone hosts some 50,000 traders. The country’s dozen or so textile mills cannot meet its 80,000-tonne annual demand. Raising a tax does not create domestic capacity — in the short run it raises prices and pushes volume toward informal channels.

The practical consequence for importers: the Uganda risk is not a sudden closure, it is annual escalation. Budget for a rising floor, not a cliff edge.

Compliance and payment

Two operational points complete the picture. First, a PVoC Certificate of Conformity is mandatory for Uganda, issued against US EAS 356:2019 for used textiles and US EAS 386:2020 for used footwear. Without a CoC you face a 15% CIF surcharge plus full destination inspection — and note that the surcharge waiver that ran from 28 October 2024 to 27 April 2025 explicitly excluded these two standards, so used clothing and used footwear have never had relief.

Second, payment is not the bottleneck it is in some African markets. Uganda’s shilling is freely floating, the country is an IMF Article VIII member with no current account restrictions, and it has connected to CIPS, so settlement in RMB is available. Your risk in Uganda is documentation and duty, not currency access.

🇪🇺 The Supply Side: Europe Now Treats Collected Textiles as Waste

This change is about where your goods come from, not where they go — which is why importers have been slower to notice it.

The revised Waste Framework Directive entered into force on 16 October 2025. Its key provision for this trade is deceptively short: separately collected textiles are to be treated as waste before they undergo professional sorting. In practice that closes the argument that unsorted, separately collected clothing is a “second-hand good in transit” rather than a waste shipment. Member states must transpose the directive by 17 June 2027 and establish extended producer responsibility schemes for textiles and footwear by 17 April 2028.

Two further European measures matter for supply:

• The destruction ban. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, large enterprises may no longer destroy unsold apparel, accessories and footwear as of 19 July 2026. Medium-sized enterprises follow on 19 July 2030; micro and small businesses are exempt. Large firms must report destroyed volumes from February 2027. One consequence is that unsold European stock increasingly needs a route to market rather than a shredder — an opportunity for buyers positioned to take it.
• France’s anti-fast-fashion law. Passed in June 2026 and effective 1 September 2026, it imposes an environmental charge of €0.25 to €12 per item depending on category, capped at 50% of the pre-tax price, with the cap scheduled to reach €19.50–20 by 2030. Advertising for covered products is banned from January 2027. China has asked France to withdraw the law as discriminatory, and the European Commission has itself questioned its consistency with EU rules. Treat this one as directionally clear but legally unsettled.

Sourcing note: the four European measures above are drawn from law-firm and trade-press analysis rather than the Official Journal text. We flag that deliberately — the direction is confirmed, while specific dates and per-item amounts should be re-checked against the OJ before you rely on them contractually.

Also worth planning for: the EU closed its low-value consignment de minimis relief in July 2026 and replaced it with a flat €3 processing charge. That affects small-parcel flows, not container freight, but it is part of the same shift.

🇨🇳 China’s Export Side: Proof, Not Promises

Because we ship out of China, the most immediately relevant change of 2026 is on the export side — and it is worth stating plainly that it applies to us as much as to our competitors.

Chinese customs authorities have tightened scrutiny of used clothing, used bags and used footwear exports. Forwarder notices dated July 2026 describe the operating requirement:

• Where the destination country requires cleaning and disinfection, the exporter must show a contract clause to that effect plus photographic evidence of the process, demonstrating the goods have normal usable value.
• Where the destination country does not require it, the buyer must supply an official document from that country confirming no cleaning or sorting is required.
• A self-declaration from the foreign buyer is not accepted.

For importers this changes one thing concretely: if you tell a Chinese supplier “our country doesn’t require cleaning,” you will be asked for a government document — not a letter on your own letterhead. Buyers who cannot produce one should expect the goods to be routed through the documented cleaning path instead.

The policy direction behind this is visible in China’s Solid Waste Comprehensive Governance Action Plan (January 2026), which calls for stricter control of waste and used-goods exports, and in analysis published in China Environmental Science (2026, No. 1) noting that the rules still do not clearly separate “worn” textiles from “waste” textiles.

The contrast between China’s two directions is worth understanding. Importing used clothing into China is prohibited outright — used garments sit on the Prohibited Import Solid Waste Catalogue under the five-ministry announcement of 2020, effective 1 January 2021, and the applicable standard (GB 34330-2017) does not treat cleaning or disinfection as changing that status. Exporting is restricted and documented, not banned.

🌍 Basel Convention: What OEWG-15 Decided — and What It Didn’t

The Basel Convention’s Open-ended Working Group held its fifteenth meeting in Geneva from 23 to 26 June 2026, with around 140 countries participating. It adopted 19 decisions. None of them changed the classification or control of used textiles.

What actually happened: the group took note of the Secretariat’s report of 8 May 2026 covering five options — classification codes, a definitional split between waste and non-waste, a certification system, a harmonised HS approach, and technical guidelines — and invited comments. The substantive discussion moves to COP-18 in April 2027. Comments close 30 November 2026.

The balance of opinion in the room leaned toward technical guidelines and better data collection before touching waste codes. Several parties warned that adding textile waste to Annex II — which would trigger prior informed consent procedures — would carry serious negative socio-economic consequences, arguing that used textiles are a resource rather than a waste.

We want to be explicit about this, because much of the coverage has not been: OEWG-15 did not ban used clothing exports, and it did not agree to. If you read a headline saying Basel is banning the trade, that is not what the record shows. The live risk is a future change in classification, not a current one — and the practical preparation is documentation, not disruption.

🇬🇭 Ghana: The Quality Data Every Importer Should Read

Ghana has introduced no new restriction. But in May 2026 the organisation Fashion for Good published findings from Kantamanto market in Accra that every exporter and importer in this trade should sit with.

Kantamanto is the largest used clothing market in the world: more than 20 acres, around 8,500 stalls, roughly 15 million garments arriving every week, supporting over 26,700 livelihoods, of which about 66% are women.

The finding: more than 86% of the garments inspected showed damage, despite being declared rewearable. A global control study of 8,280 garments found 37% completely undamaged. Traders who buy unopened bales cannot know what is inside before they pay — which means the risk of a badly graded bale lands entirely on the Ghanaian retailer.

We should be straight about one thing. The waste ratio itself is disputed and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Or Foundation, a Ghana-based advocacy organisation, puts the share of imported clothing that becomes waste at around 40%. The UK Fashion and Textile Association and GUCDA, Ghana’s own second-hand dealers’ association, put it near 2–5%. Both sides have an interest in the number, and neither has published its inspection method. The honest reading is that the answer depends heavily on whether repair and upcycling are counted as use or as waste — and on who is doing the counting.

What this means commercially cuts both ways. If you sell graded bales, this report is an argument in your favour — provided you can show a verifiable grading standard. A grade letter on its own will not survive contact with it.

📊 The Wider Picture: East Africa Is Tightening Enforcement

Two neighbouring markets already covered on this blog illustrate the pattern.

In Tanzania, TBS destroyed 110 tonnes of goods on 25 June 2026, including 26 tonnes of banned used underwear and towels. Tanzania’s restriction is partial — it targets used textiles containing underwear, towels, socks, masks, hospital textiles, leso and reflective strips — and enforcement is destruction on detection rather than a penalty. Tanzania also levies a flat 35% duty and requires a PVoC certificate of conformity for every consignment, with used goods eligible only through Route A. We covered the full detail in our analysis of the Mkuranga destruction.

In Kenya, the Finance Bill 2026 debate over mitumba taxation has kept the sector’s tax treatment unsettled, on top of a 35% duty and a certificate of conformity regime. The EU supply-side measures described above were also covered in our piece on France’s push for EU export restrictions.

The pattern across all of them: enforcement is getting more specific, more documented and more automated — not more uniform. A shipment that clears one East African market on documentation alone will not clear another.

✅ What Importers Should Do Now

1. Get the Uganda duty method in writing. Ask your clearing agent to confirm whether your consignment will be assessed at the 35% flat rate under the current stay of application or at a per-kilogramme specific duty. The gap between the two decides whether a deal is profitable.
2. Re-model Uganda at 93–95% of CIF, not 58%. If your pricing was built before 1 July 2026, it is out of date.
3. Prepare an official document for China — not a self-declaration. If your country does not require cleaning and disinfection, get that on government paper before you place the order.
4. Demand a written grading standard, not a grade letter. The Kantamanto data is now public, and your buyers will use it.
5. Do not price a Basel-driven ban into your 2027 plan. Nothing changed; comments close 30 November 2026 and COP-18 sits in April 2027. Watch it — don’t plan around it.
6. Separate your markets by enforcement style. Countries that destroy on detection need a different compliance posture from countries that tax on entry.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Did Uganda ban used clothing imports in 2026?

No. Uganda kept the trade legal and added a 30% environmental levy effective 1 July 2026, on top of a 35% import duty. The government’s stated approach is to make the trade non-viable through taxation rather than to prohibit it, and no ban has been enacted despite long-standing political criticism of mitumba.

How much tax do I pay on a container of used clothes to Uganda in 2026?

Roughly 93–95% of CIF value once the 35% duty, 30% environmental levy, 18% VAT, 6% withholding tax, 1.5% infrastructure levy and 2% import declaration fee are stacked. Because the environmental levy sits inside the VAT base, it compounds rather than simply adding. A 40-foot container landed in Kampala is currently around US$41,840 against US$30,832 at Mombasa.

Is the Basel Convention banning used clothing exports?

No. OEWG-15, held in Geneva from 23 to 26 June 2026, did not change the classification or control of used textiles. The discussion was deferred to COP-18 in April 2027, with comments closing 30 November 2026. Reports describing an agreed Basel ban are not supported by the meeting record.

Does the EU now treat all collected clothing as waste?

Under the revised Waste Framework Directive, in force since 16 October 2025, separately collected textiles are treated as waste before professional sorting. Member states must transpose it by 17 June 2027. It affects the documentation burden on the export side rather than the legality of importing into Africa, Asia or South America.

What documents does China require to export used clothing in 2026?

Either evidence that the destination country requires cleaning and disinfection — a contract clause plus process photographs showing normal usable value — or an official document from that country confirming no cleaning or sorting is required. A self-declaration issued by the foreign buyer is not accepted.

Is now a bad time to be in the used clothing business?

The trade is being taxed and documented harder, not closed. Uganda remains a legal and very large market; Tanzania restricted specific categories rather than the trade; Basel deferred its decision to 2027. The importers who lose ground in this cycle are the ones quoting 2025 numbers against 2026 rules — not the ones who update their documentation.

Why Hissen Global

We export from China, which means the export-side changes described above are ours to carry, not yours to chase. Every consignment we ship is sorted and graded in our own facility against a documented standard — not a grade letter applied at the bale — and we prepare the CoC and destination documentation for the market you are importing into.

On the two questions this article raises that most suppliers will not answer directly: we will tell you which Uganda duty method your clearing agent should expect, and we will tell you honestly when a market’s rules are still unsettled rather than quoting you a certainty we do not have.

If your sourcing decisions for 2026–2027 depend on getting the landed-cost arithmetic right, start with our wholesale import guide or review how we sort and grade.

For market-specific sourcing, see our ranges in sorted used clothing and our quality standards.