The results of a study conducted by Fashion For Good and The Circle Economy to identify post-consumer textile and garment waste in six European nations have been made public. In order to close a knowledge gap in the used textile industry and estimate the number of prospective feedstocks for mechanical and chemical recycling, they founded Sorting for Circularity Europe in early 2021.
The 16-month project’s primary focus was on low-value post-consumer textiles. According to the report, these are clothes that cannot be worn again or “have reached market saturation in the global second-hand textile sector,” meaning they will likely be downcycled, either made into wipes or burned. According to the analysis, there are 494,000 tonnes, or 74% of this post-consumer trash, that are “readily available for fiber-to-fibre recycling.” The most common fiber was cotton (42%), which was followed by mixes (32%), of which polycotton made up over half (12% of the total). The analysis finds that 21% of the materials examined would be viable for mechanical recycling and 53% for chemical recycling after taking additional factors like the presence of buttons or zippers and color into account. This gives a “huge opportunity” for circularity, according to Fashion for Good.
Leading textile waste and sorting plants from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom took part in the research.
