In East Java’s Sidoarjo district, the Lamalama Indonesia (LamaLama) thrift shop offers rows of second-hand clothes, including T-shirts, shirts, batiks, jackets, and trousers.
Thrift shops sell second-hand items, including clothing. LamaLama occupies a single room measuring three meters by three meters in size. Among the rows of hung garments, Juan Khaidir, the Chief Operating Officer, was busy cleaning and sorting.
“I’m preparing for tomorrow. We are only open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 8 a.m. and 15 p.m. Other than that, we are closed,” Khaidir told CoverBothSide on 3 April 2023.
Juan said that the various second-hand garments hanging from the clothing stands all came from donations. They have been carefully selected for resale.
LamaLama, he said, has avoided buying or taking imported second-hand clothes from importers or suppliers as most thrift shops usually do. His shop prefers to sell used clothes from people in the country, so most of what it sells is local brands.
”There are indeed some foreign brands, usually jeans. But they are rare. Most are local brands. Those foreign brands also come from people here, and are not imported second-hand clothes,” he said adding that the shop mostly offers “pre-loved” garments for women.
”Therefore, most of the used clothes here are women’s garments such as blouses, shirts batik gowns, and crop tops. Men’s garments are often unavailable because they are quickly sold,” he said.
A business with social impact
Established in 2020, LamaLama is operated by three people – Manggalih Soka Ayu as Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Khaidir as Chief Operating Officer, and Adelia Oktavia as Social Media Director. Adelia oversees interns, including in its fashion designer unit.
Since its inception, LamaLama has held to the vision of becoming a thrift shop business with a social impact. This is focused on reducing fashion waste and extending garment life.
A BBC report estimates that there are some 92 million tons of global fashion waste annually. The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry’s National Waste Management Information System (SIPSN KLHK) showed that Indonesia produced 2,3 million tons of textile waste in 2021, or 12 percent of household waste.
”We are here because we care about fashion waste. It is why LamaLama adopted the concept of a sustainable thrift shop — how to manage garments so that they do not get immediately thrown away and become harmful waste,” Khaidir said.
LamaLama provides four services related to used garment management.
First, it accepts used clothes donations. Anyone could donate their used clothing. The used clothes will then be sorted.
Those that were still functional and wearable were sold while those that weren’t would be recycled into another garment or new product. “So, none of our second-hand items are thrown away,” he said.
Second, LamaLama offers preloved clothing — clothes in good condition and sellable.
The third service they offer is clothing exchange. Customers can trade their perfectly wearable clothing for used clothes in the shop.
The last service is accepting used clothes consignment. This is for those customers who believe that their second-hand clothes are still in mint condition and want to sell them instead of donating them.
”Technically speaking, their used clothes can be put in consignment with us for sale in LamaLama’s online and offline shops. We take a commission from each sold item,” Khaidir said.
All these services, Khaidir added, are part of LamaLama’s efforts in educating people that they can extend their clothes’ life and contribute to waste reduction efforts.
”Besides showing people that used, wearable clothes can be resold, we also like to educate them that these clothes can also be made into new clothing or goods,” he said.
Related story: Wakatobi tackles plastic waste through early education.
Giving old clothes new life
To date, LamaLama has produced a variety of ‘new ‘ clothing from used ones such as shirts, jackets, and crop tops, to pouches or small bags.
In producing these goods, LamaLama works with a local while the designs are created by the shop’s own fashion design team.
“Of course, even though they are made using used clothes, we still make sure the quality of the products we produce is really good and attracts buyers,” he said.
Pieces left over from the production can also be used for pouches, kitchen gloves, and other items. LamaLama, Khaidir said, is gradually producing clothes and goods from discarded garments, not only selling second-hand clothes.
”We usually sell them immediately, but now we are producing too. So selling used clothes has become our secondary project. Making new products is our primary objective,” he said.
Patchwork waste is also not thrown away but turned into yarn by Pable Indonesia — a responsible textile waste management company established in Surabaya in 2020.
”We gather the textile waste in these plastic bags and send them to Pable,” Khaidir said, pointing to a number of plastic bags filled with textile waste. “We are doing our part so that nothing is thrown away and becomes fashion waste,” he added.
Indonesia, ‘A dumping ground’ for used clothes
Buying second-hand clothes is a trend in Indonesia. A growing number of thrift shops contributes to this. Besides offering cheap prices, this business is also presented as a possible solution to fashion waste.
However, not many shops share LamaLama’s vision. Most thrift shops only focus on selling used clothes and are not trying to manage used clothes more sustainably.
But whether thrift shops today offer solutions to fashion waste remains to be proven. In many cases, many believe thrift shops only add to fashion waste because most of the used clothes they sell are imported and some are not fit to sell or wear.
Reny (not her real name), a thrift shop owner in Batu, a tourist town in East Java, for example, buys her used clothes from a supplier of imported used garments in Surabaya.
She told Coverbothside she once bought a bale of second-hand clothing from an imported used clothing supplier from Surabaya. She said only some were suitable for use and resale.
“It happened at the end of February. At that time, only a quarter of used clothes were fit to wear and suitable for sale. The rest were zonk (not suitable for use and resale),” she said when interviewed on Tuesday, April 18, 2023.
Through a trade minister regulation issued in 2015, the government banned selling imported used clothes such as Reny and most thrift shops did.
The regulation has since been reviewed a number of times and the latest regulation issued in 2022 provided more details on the ban.
However, despite the ban, imports of used garments continue freely. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), Indonesia imported hundreds of tons of used clothes from 81 countries between 2019 and 2023.
This makes Indonesia a ‘dumping ground’ for discarded clothes from various countries around the world. This includes developed countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In 2019, Indonesia imported 417,728 tons of used clothing from 68 countries worth US$6,075,437 or about Rp90 billion.
Natural disaster sites, another dumping ground
Used clothing also poses problems during natural disasters. Donations of used clothes are usually collected during these unprecedented times in the hope of alleviating the burden of victims.
Unfortunately, this goodwill is not always accompanied by an adequate selection of donated used clothing. Some just see it as an opportunity to rid themselves of their old clothing that was no longer wearable.
When Mount Semeru in Lumajang, East Java, erupted on December 4, 2021, many donated used clothes were no longer fit for wear, Coverbothside found. These unusable old clothes, worn out and with holes, were left piling up, with no takers.
Many ended up on roads or in garbage dumps. These cases could be found in government assistance outposts as well as those operated by humanitarian volunteers.
One example could be found at the coordination post of the GUSDURian Peduli – a civil society group focused on disaster response, social and economic empowerment, and volunteer organizing. It received about four truckloads of donated and used clothes, said Tiya Sugito, a volunteer who worked there.
”They came from Surabaya, Probolinggo, and other regions. In total they equaled four truckloads,” Sugito told CoverBothSide on April 2, 2023.
She said that not many donated clothes were fit for use or even fit enough to be given to victims.
”There were many like that (no longer fit for wear) at the relief coordination post. “We didn’t even know what to do with them,” said a woman who is also involved in the Green Force Environmental Community.
After evaluation, she added, the post decided to temporarily halt receiving used clothing donations.
Some of the used clothes that were not taken but still fit for wear were given out for free to whoever wanted them. This was done from a makeshift stall set up in Lumajang or sold at a shop set up in nearby Jember.
“The ones sold were used clothing that was still fit to wear. The proceeds were used to help the eruption victims,” Sugito said.
GUSDURian Peduli volunteers also produced foot mats using donated-used clothing that was unusable.
Despite all those efforts, Sugito said there were still piles of unwanted clothing. These piles were later stored in GUSDURian Peduli’s warehouse.
”And when the earthquake hit Cianjur, we sent those used clothes there,” she said referring to a 5.6 magnitude earthquake that shook the Cianjur District in West Java on 7 December 2022, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds of people.