Why Can’t We Just Recycle Our Old Clothes?

Nov 16

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At the root of fashion's most pressing problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution sits overproduction and overconsumption. Each year, an estimated 100 billion garments are purchased, and 92 million tonnes are thrown out. By 2030, that number is expected to increase to 134 million tonnes.

While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed production, the fashion industry has seemingly bounced back, returning to a previous growth trajectory. According to the 2021 Textile Exchange Preferred Fiber and Materials Market report, post-pandemic fiber production is increasing. While it's unclear how the pandemic and supply chain issues will impact future fiber production, if business continues as usual, fiber production is expected to increase by another 34% to 146 million tonnes in 2030.

The truth, we're making and buying more than the earth can sustain.

From an environmental standpoint, the problem with overconsumption is that the textile industry heavily relies on massive amounts of non-renewable resources. Motivated by the threat of limited resources and a growing concern among consumers about the environmental impact of their purchases, brands are committing to sustainability and launching eco-focused initiates left and right.

However, while brands say they want to champion sustainability, they also don't want to give up their fast-fashion business model. AKA they don't want to produce less, and they don't want you to stop buying their products.

They are a business, after all.

But it's not just brands. Consumers say they care about climate change, sustainability, and the environmental impact of their purchases. Still, in mass, they’re addicted to the novelty of new and don't want to give up cheap, cute, trendy clothing.

For this reason, the fashion industry has latched on to the idea of circular fashion — a concept rooted in Indigenous ancestry that aims to "design out waste" by reducing the number of natural resources used to make our clothing and diverting products from landfills. In short, circular fashion (a closed-loop system) is making new materials out of old materials.

Enter textile recycling.

Major retailers like H&M and Zara have rolled out donation drop-off bins in their stores, allowing shoppers to easily donate unwanted, used garments — often in return for a discount on their next purchase. The pr/marketing goal for many fashion brands enabling recycling programs is to move their supply chain to a closed-loop system where textiles are recycled, thus theoretically eliminating the need for raw materials by keeping textiles out of landfills.

If fashion could achieve a closed-loop system, nothing would ever go to the landfill. Clothes would just be endlessly recycled. The problem, however, is that we currently can't do that.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, less than 1% of fiber used to produce clothing is recycled to make new clothing. Garments that are recycled are mainly downcycled (recycling something so that the resulting product is of a lower value than the original item) into items like insulation, mattress stuffing and industrial wipes, which surprise, surprise, ultimately ends up in the landfill.

Recycled clothing typically comes from plastic water bottles, not old textiles.

But, why?

The Problem: Preparing Materials for Recycling

Before clothing can be recycled, it has to be sorted. The sorting processes for post-consumer textile waste is largely done by hand which is, time and labor-intensive. Once collected, clothing needs to be separated by color and material makeup. Removing trims and taking garments apart at the seams is also a part of the job that takes time and requires a skilled workforce.

The Problem: Mixed Materials

If you look at the content label on your clothes, you're likely to find that it's made with blended materials like cotton and polyester, which are difficult to separate. While companies are pioneering new technology and pushing innovations forward, many are still in the research and development or pilot phase and are not ready to scale.

The Problem: No Label

By the time garments reach their end-of-life and are ready to be recycled, many don't have a content label or, the label is hard to read. Without reading read the label, how can you know what a garment is made up of to know how to recycle it? Although researchers have been developing technology to identify different fabric types and automatically separate large volumes of garments by fiber, the tech is still nascent. And, once sorted, the dyes applied to the fabrics still need to be removed for yarns to be reused.

The Problem: Garment Components

Before clothing can be recycled, components like labels, zips, buttons, and sewing threads (usually made from polyester) need to be removed, which again is time and labor-intensive.

The Problem: Limited Recycling Options

Once you have materials ready to be recycled, they can be recycled one of two ways: chemical or mechanical. Both have their pros, and both have their cons.

Mechanical recycling means the garment is shredded down into small pieces. Because the mechanical recycling process essentially degrades the fiber quality by shortening them and reducing their performance, these fibers have to be mixed with virgin material in order for fiber that's mechanically recycled to be turned back into clothing again.
Chemical recycling uses chemical solvents to break down old garments into virgin-quality fibers. Chemical recycling processes can separate blended fabrics while retaining fiber integrity and in some cases, building back a stronger material. In addition, solvents used in the process often can be collected after usage and reused continuously.

The Problem: It’s Expensive

Funding the development and scalability of technology innovations to recycle clothing into new clothing is expensive. By 2020 Inditex (Zara's parent company) invested $3.5 million in textile recycling research through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The H&M Foundation (H&M Group's philanthropic arm), spent $7.2 million across a four-year collaboration with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) to develop a recycling technology they say is the first to separate and recycle polyester and cotton-blended clothing at scale. The H&M Foundation has since invested another $100 million to scale it up over the next five years. Despite massive amounts of money poured into R&D, we still don’t have a large scale solution for garment-to-garment recycling.

While an industry-wide solution for garment recycling seems to be coming, it’s not a silver bullet. Garment recycling at scale is still a dream as it will take years for recyclers to build the infrastructure to collect clothes from households for some of the reasons previously mentioned.

Any brand taking steps towards sustainability is a noble step in the right direction. However, perhaps it's time for companies to look at the underlying issue of overproduction and put more resources into revenue channels that don’t require making new clothes, like renting, secondhand and repair services.

Until then, as fashion shows no signs of lessening production or changing its dependence on consumerism and mass production, one has to wonder if fashion's interest in closing the loop is really about climate change and sustainability. Perhaps recycling schemes are more about removing consumer guilt, so shoppers remain content with treating fashion as disposable and continue buying from them despite growing climate concerns.