fashion: material waste

Natural resources used for extraction, farming, harvest, processing, manufacturing and shipping phases of the value chain, play an important role in the fashion industry. In the current linear fashion industry, these non-renewable materials are extracted, used and ultimately discarded as textile waste. This textile waste mountain can be divided in pre-consumer waste (also called industrial waste) or post-consumer textile waste. These textiles are often incinerated, landfilled or in exceptional cases, recycled. 

Understanding what happens with textile waste is important in transitioning towards a circular economy. Often governmental bodies develop a strategy for waste management, for example in the Waste Framework Directive. In this directive, the European Parliament demands waste management legislation and policy to act according to the waste hierarchy. The waste hierarchy aims to retain the value of resources for as long as possible. The hierarchy is as follows: 

(a) prevention; 

(b) preparing for reuse; 

(c) recycling; 

(d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; 

(e) disposal. Unfortunately, around 10–20% of all textile products are currently wasted, which results in large resource losses when not considered either for reuse or recycling, as textile waste is currently incinerated or disposed of, which are the last steps of the waste hierarchy. Whereas increasing the collection of used clothing for reuse and recycling in the EU leads to a reached reduction of among others, 8% climate change, 8% fossil depletion and 7% urban land occupation on overall environmental performance. 

So, improving the environmental impact of textiles thus requires an increase in reuse and recycling of textile waste. But, what exactly happens to our collected textile waste? Sanne de Lorme, communications Sympany shows the daily practice of a Dutch sorting company dealing with mainly post-consumer textiles and gives insight into the possibilities and limitations of the current recycling system.

Sympany is a textile collector.they collect the discarded textiles in the Netherlands. then sort it and sell it for either re-use or recycing, collecting around 24-25 million kg of textle every year. So in the Netherlands, around 80 million kg of textile is being collected.And Sympany collect around 24 to 25 million kg every year.In total though about 145 still ends up in the household waste. And unfortunately this gets burned.

Sympany's vision is to collect as many discarded textiles as possible. And give all of those items a sustainable new destination. We buy and buy more and more textiles every year. the average of new-bought items in a year is now 46 a person. And we throw away around 40 each year as well. People start to buy more but also they throw away more of the clothes. We see really differences in the quality. So, before there were a lot of like re-used, re-wearable items. And this is getting less and the quality is declining. So this is something we see throughout the years. Because of the fast fashion, because of like the quality of the clothes that people buy and also throw away. There is a lot of household waste in the textile. So even the good textile is getting infected by that. People throw away their food leftovers, stuff from the garden, everything that you can imagine, they throw away in the textile container.

Some of the municipalities in The Netherlands still think they can earn with the collection of textile. So they have to be paid to get the textile from them. yet, The overall prices on the sales are dropping. So there is a lot of textile that's on the market and the overall prices are decreasing, So the whole business model with the costs of sorting, transport and then the high costs that we have to pay to municipalities is under pressure. for the recycling, there aren't that big solutions yet So there're problems with upscaling recycling possibilities, but also the revenue models for recycling possibilities aren't there yet. And our percentages of recycling quality are growing. we need to find a solution for that, that it also has a revenue model.

the circular chain of textile. Without people collecting it, sorting it and giving it a new destination, there is no circular model possible. specific customers, all have a specific demand. if we don't sort what they want, we will loose the customers. And nobody will end up buying products. We also have our specific buyers that buy not only our shop quality, but also all the other qualities. it's a question of like the amount that they buy. So you can also have like complaints about the qualities, recycling qualities are growing The quality of the textile is decreasing So we need to come up with solutions for recycling categories.But we cannot do this alone. We need to do this with stakeholders in like the textile industry to come up with these solutions. And we need to collaborate where possible. we need a really good regulation from the government on this. So that not only the possibilities are there to recycle but also the demand for the recycled products or the yarns or whatever is there.

the first thing that is needed is that we start to buy less. If we buy less and better quality then we throw away better quality, that can be re-used. Either re-used or recycled. Because we are all like one actor and only if we collaborate we can find the recycling solutions for it.