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Over 16,000kg of secondhand clothing donated by people in Singapore for earthquake victims in Turkey have been disposed of due to hygiene reasons, CNA reported.

Other secondhand items deemed unsuitable were handed over to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to be recycled and distributed to other countries in the region.

Only new items accepted

In February, the Turkish Embassy in Singapore issued a call for donations, including winter clothing and supplies such as women's hygiene products and diapers.

The original Facebook post asked that donors send "new or well used products for hygiene purposes".

Which possibly led to a misunderstanding. A subsequent poster instead specified "new/unused materials".

The resulting response was overwhelming enough that its office ran out of space, and the embassy suspended the collection of individual in-kind donations.

Regardless, Turkish Ambassador to Singapore Mehmet Burçin Gönenli told CNA on Mar. 7 that Turkey only accepted new or unused clothing.

Embassy staff and Turkish and Singaporean volunteers sorted through the donations, picking out items that were suitable, such as items in their original packaging.

In total, about 116,000kg of donations — including tents, sleeping bags, clothing, baby food, and blankets — have been sent to Turkey via air.

Another 55,000kg of donations were arranged to be transported by ship.

"The volume of donations we received was staggering, so again we are deeply grateful for that," Gönenli said.

Unusable donations

As for the remaining donations, the embassy got in touch with some NGOs to "establish cooperation with them with the intention of sending secondhand clothing to people in need", Gönenli told CNA.

"We did not discard (the donations) and we didn’t want to throw them away, but we wanted to put them to good use, so my team at the embassy enquired what we could do with them.

"The NGOs are recycling them and distributing them to various countries in this region which needed them, but I don’t know specifically where."

The embassy also engaged homegrown recycler Tay Paper Recycling to sort through the unusable donations.

Its general manager Daryl Chew told CNA that it had disposed of around 16,000kg of unwanted clothing amounting.

Other secondhand clothing donations were sent to Global Ehsan Relief, a Malaysia-based humanitarian aid group with branches in countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

The group did not respond to CNA's queries on what it did with the donations.

Top image via Mothership/Sheryl Seah and Isaac Wong