In many industries, resource conservation through recycling is already state of the art. Yet despite being one of the largest consumers of raw materials, the textile and apparel sector is still in the early stages when it comes to reclaiming and reusing those resources.
A large share of discarded textiles is exported to second-hand dealers around the world, turned into wiping cloths or shoddy wool, sent to landfill or incinerated. These disposal strategies have serious environmental consequences – making fibre-to-fibre recycling increasingly important. The textile care industry can play a key role in this transition.
Recycling Raw Materials Is Nothing New. In fact, it has long been part of everyday operations—especially when societies are cut off from certain resources, when materials are in short supply, or when raw materials come at prohibitively high prices. Scarcity often sparks innovation, as seen in the recovery of various scrap metals. Circular use also becomes attractive when, as with glass or some plastics, the cost of virgin materials exceeds that of secondary raw materials, and when the substance can be reused without any loss in quality.
Recycling is typically driven by economic factors. That’s one reason why circularity in textiles and clothing is still virtually nonexistent: new textiles are often cheaper than those made from recycled fibres. According to figures from U.S.-based NGO. Textile Exchange, only about one percent of global fibre consumption currently comes from recycled textiles.
Greater Corporate Responsibility for Textile Consumption
The wasteful use of raw materials in textile production has long been harming the environment. Ghana, one of the world’s largest importers of second-hand clothing, is overwhelmed by low-quality fast fashion. In parts of Asia, dye houses are destroying ecosystems and livelihoods with untreated wastewater. Each year, the apparel industry emits as much greenhouse gas as Germany, the UK, and France combined—and the environmental burden keeps increasing.
The fact that the situation is spiraling out of control has caught the attention of policymakers. In Europe, Australia, and California, the textile and clothing sector is being pushed to take more responsibility for their products and packaging. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requires companies to consider the entire lifecycle of their products, including recycling. The aim is to ensure that more new textiles contain a share of recycled materials in the future.
Fibre Recovery Is Possible
Recycled fibres—particularly polyester (rPET)—are already used to some extent in the textile and apparel industry. However, these fibres are mostly derived from PET bottles. In fact, there are two fundamental recycling methods: mechanical and chemical recycling. The latter includes processes like depolymerisation, where used materials are broken down into their chemical components and reused.
While this process is said to work for polyester, post-consumer textiles are more often subjected to thermal recycling. In this method, the shredded material is melted down and spun into new fibres. Chemical depolymerisation and raw material recovery, on the other hand, have become established for polyamide, where old fishing nets, ropes, and similar items are turned into virgin-quality fibres. Cotton fabrics can also be broken down into their cellulose molecules. These are then processed into pulp, which is used in paper and fibre production.
Fashion Poses Major Challenges to Recycling
The processes may sound simple—but they’re not. They require pure, preferably undyed input materials, which are rare in the fashion industry. The vast majority of textiles consist of countless blended materials. These blends usually allow only one recycling method: mechanical recycling. In this process, used textiles are shredded down to the fibre level, resulting in fragments of varying lengths and compositions. Depending on the mix, some of these fibres can be spun into new yarns. However, most take a different route—they’re turned into wiping cloths, filling material, or painter’s fleece. For coated, laminated, or bonded fabrics, synthetic leather, high-strength or technical textiles, there is currently no circular solution. These materials are typically incinerated or landfilled.
Creating a truly circular system in which raw textile materials are recovered and reused as fibres still faces significant challenges and requires thoughtful eco-design. But it’s not always necessary to start from scratch. By reworking old textiles, new products can emerge. Textile care companies can play an important role here: large, retired items from hotels and hospitals are ideal for repurposing into bags, accessories, or catering apparel. Old workwear can also be given a second life through embroidery or the combination of usable parts.
The Power of Scale
The textile care sector can help accelerate progress toward a circular economy for a very specific reason: textile service providers around the world work with large volumes of standardized linen—usually made from two-component blends or pure materials.
This homogeneity of materials, along with the fact that used textiles are collected at fixed locations, makes it easier to develop defined and scalable recycling processes. A working concept has already been demonstrated by Cibutex, a cooperative of competing European textile service companies. They sell large volumes of uniform used textiles to upcyclers, where the fibres are recovered and reintroduced into the textile cycle.
If this example were to catch on globally, it would mark a significant step forward for the textile and apparel industry on the path to circularity.
