Textile Insight

textileinsight.com Spring 2023 ~ Textile Insight • 35 textileinsight.com Spring 2023 ~ Textile Insight • 35 T extile waste is the USA's fastest growing waste stream. Fast fashion companies encourage over- consumption with cheap clothing that is trendy one day, trash the next. • Zara produces 450 million garments, with 20,000 new styles each year. Shein releases a whopping 6000 new styles a day. • 100 billion garments are produced glob- ally each year, generating 92 million tonnes (metric tons) of textile waste going to landfills or incineration. • In the USA alone, 11.3 million tons of textile waste, representing 85 percent of our discarded apparel and textile products, winds up in landfills.* Circular textile-to-textile recycling of unsold and post-consumer apparel and textiles would not only keep these items out of the landfill, but also be a way of monetizing waste. "By moving to a circular system, the industry can unlock a USD 560 billion economic opportunity," states the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Roadblocks to Circular Recycling e profitable collection and sorting of used post-consumer textiles has always existed in the industry, but on a local level, with wearable garments shipped overseas, and the remainder shredded for rags and shoddy. A report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation points out that on a global scale, less than one percent of used clothing is recycled into new garments. "ere's a big secondhand textile market in the U.S. It just hasn't been focused on the recycling for textiles," explains Karla Magruder, founder of Accelerating Circularity, a nonprofit developing new supply chains and business models to turn spent textiles into raw materials. "ere are now initiatives, like ours and others, that are working with companies to change how the materials are sorted for their next life." Created in 2020, Accelerating Circularity researches, maps, and reports on the textile recycling infrastructure in the U.S. and Europe, and is trialing textile-to-textile recycling in both polyester and cellulosic materials. Collecting, sorting, and aggregating used clothing and other post-consumer textile waste is at the heart of textile-to-textile recycling; but efforts in the U.S. lag behind that of the European Union. "ere have historically been fewer incentives and regulations in terms of textile recycling in the U.S. is has caused a significant lag to emerge in terms of the tech- nologies available and the amount of players in the space," explains Constanza Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Sortile, a New York-based, textile waste management technology. "In addit ion, E xtende d Pro ducer Responsibility (EPR) policy is actively being discussed at an EU level and already in place in multiple European countries. is provides much needed investment and funds into the core collection, sorting and recycling infra- structure in those countries that is severely lacking in the U.S," she continues. Successful municipal textile waste collection schemes in U.S. cities are few and far between. "Municipalities, for the most part, do not collect textiles in the U.S.," points out Gomez. "Textile collection is done by either for-profit or non- profit companies dedicated to this endeavor." Focusing on Collection and Sorting "We are focusing on collection as the key to unlocking circularity," explains Kabira Stokes, CEO of Retrievr, a for-profit recycler of tex- tiles and electronics in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. Chosen by Philadelphia to pilot separate textile and electronic waste collection in 2020, Retrievr diverted 71,991 pounds of clothing from the city's landfills in its first year. Aer sorting, around 30 percent of Retrievr's textile waste is resalable; the remainder is down- cycled into rags, insulation, or stuffing. e company is exploring partnerships with brands and downstream recyclers for fiber-to-fiber recycling technologies. "Circular recycling is still in its start-up phase, and investments will have to be made," Stokes continues. "We need the feedstock for these emerging technologies." Retrievr is part of NYC-based Circular Services, which operates twelve recycling facili- ties and provides circular materials management for municipalities and businesses throughout the U.S. Circular Services and Retrievr, along with an innovation center called Center for the Circular Economy, are all funded by financial services company Closed Loop Partners. Bridging the Retail to Recycling Gap e creation of quality feedstock for tex- tile-to-textile recycling requires identification and separation of textile waste by fiber and color. Manual sorting can no longer cope with the growing volume, and can be inaccurate, as labels are oen missing or incorrect. e use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a tech- nology that can identify fiber composition and color, has been a game-changer in automating the separation of textile waste. Sortile uses NIRS and unique algorithms to scan and identify the fiber composition of textile waste, with a five times increase in productivity. Launched in 2021 by Gomez and co-founder Agustina Mir, both Columbia University graduates, the startup won GreenBiz Group's Circularity 22 Accelerate competition. "Our current customers for the sorting tech- nology are collection and sortation companies *Sources: Earth.org, the Environmental Protection Agency, World Bank. Photo: Caitriona Rogerson for Textile Mountain RAGS TO RESOURCES MONETIZING TEXTILE WASTE BEGINS WITH COLLECTION AND SORTING. BY DEBRA COBB STRATEGIES / CIRCULARITY Unwanted clothing shipped to the global south ends up in textile mountains.

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