Europe generates a staggering 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste each year, from unwanted clothing to fishing nets. Most of it is incinerated, landfilled or exported, but textile-to-textile recycling is another option that a new European Commission plan is promoting to companies.
We can’t seem to resist buying new clothes. But what happens to the millions of tonnes of textiles that are thrown away every year in Europe? Much of it goes to developing countries such as Ghana.
“15 million pieces of clothing are delivered to the city of Accra every week,” Matteo Ward, CEO and co-founder of Milan-based sustainable design studio WRÅD, told Business Planet. “There’s a new generation of kids who’ve never seen the soil underneath all this textile waste. Imagine them playing in a playground made from our textile waste.”
Recycling options
But instead of dumping tons of unwanted waste overseas, there’s the option of reusing and recycling. To find out more, Business Planet visited a recycling factory in Slovenia, where old fishing nets and carpets are turned into an infinitely recyclable nylon thread called ECONYL.
All of these materials are made from Nylon 6, a common type of nylon that can also be converted to ECONYL. Aquafil is an Italian company that uses this technology.
“Aquafil produces nylon, but instead of using oil, we start with waste,” explains the company’s chairman and CEO, Giulio Bonazzi. “Some of it is particularly egregious, like fishing nets, carpets and other plastic waste, that the industry has not been able to recycle until now. So for us, it’s like a journey from trash to treasure.”
A chemical recycling process turns nylon waste back into its raw material, caprolactam (a substance typically made from crude oil), which is squeezed into long, spaghetti-like strings that are then cut into tiny chips and spun into thin threads.
As Tina Mavric, Public Relations and Marketing Manager at Aquafil Slovenia, told Business Planet, the uses are many: “Some Econyl yarn is used in carpets, but the yarn you see here is used to make clothing: sportswear, swimwear, underwear, anoraks, backpacks.”
According to Giulio Bonazzi, how these items are designed in the first place makes a big difference in how they are recycled: “A jacket has different fabric layers, sewing threads, labels, zippers, metal parts and many different types of fibres, sometimes intimately intermixed. This is the difficulty in reaching fibre-to-fibre recycling. The products are not made to be recycled in the end.”
Holding big brands accountable
In Europe, 12.6 million tons of textile waste are generated annually. Most of it is incinerated or landfilled. Some is exported. The European Commission is planning to introduce an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system, whereby producers (brands) would pay for the entire life cycle of their products, including disposal. The more polluting the product, the more they would pay. The money would go towards recycling facilities and circularity research.
Matteo Ward, who works in a Milan studio, is excited about Extended Producer Responsibility: “It’s a fundamental change because it will incentivize brands to make products that last longer, are more durable and ultimately recyclable and renewable. Brands aren’t doing that right now because they have no incentive to do so.”
Matteo is a poacher-turned-gamewarden who previously worked for major US brands but became disillusioned with fast fashion after a textile factory collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013, killing 1,134 people.
“That was the moment I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘What am I doing?'” Matthew says. “I didn’t want to be complicit in the murder of thousands of people around the world through my work. Not at all. But the reality is that I was, by never questioning whether the jeans and T-shirts and hoodies we were selling came from these factories.”
WRÅD works with schools to highlight the social and environmental issues of fast fashion and is in talks with brands such as Candiani Denim, an Italian company that makes biodegradable denim.
Recycling technologies and sustainable fabrics will play a key role in the future of fashion, but if we want to truly reduce the impact of discarded clothing on the world, consumers need to change their habits.
