Trims and labels—the smallest parts of garments—are proving the biggest barriers to circular fashion. Accelerating Circularity’s new CSTIM report reveals how adhesives, fasteners, and finishing materials obstruct fibre recovery and recycling compatibility. By mapping technical and operational bottlenecks, the study urges the industry to align design, sorting, and recycling standards to achieve genuinely closed-loop textile systems.
- The CSTIM Working Group examined how trims and “ignored materials” complicate textile-to-textile recycling and outlined potential design solutions for scalable material recovery.
- Case studies from Homeboy Threads, Looptworks, and Valvan highlight emerging preprocessing and automation strategies to reduce labour costs and improve feedstock quality.
- The report concludes with detailed recommendations and a call to action for brands, recyclers, and policymakers to collaborate on unified circular standards.
- Released on 20 October, Toward Circular Systems for Trims and Ignored Materials (CSTIM) is a white paper developed by Accelerating Circularity’s multi-stakeholder CSTIM Working Group.
THE STUDY: The white paper explores how non-fabric components hinder textile-to-textile recycling. Convened in 2023, its multi-stakeholder working group mapped the material composition of trims, examined scalable retrieval methods, and developed recommendations linking design compatibility with circular systems. The study aims to align brands, sorters, and recyclers on feedstock standards and digital traceability for a functional closed-loop textile economy.
- The CSTIM Working Group included specialists in materials science, finishing technologies, and recycling innovation from across the value chain.
- Its research combined site visits to sorting and processing plants with stakeholder interviews covering brand, collector, and recycler operations.
- Objectives spanned trim retrieval scalability, reuse potential, EPR alignment, and data-sharing frameworks for digital product passports.
- Findings highlight the need for harmonised feedstock definitions and standards to reduce costs and improve system interoperability.
EVIDENCE ON THE TABLE: Trims, finishes, and other ignored materials disrupt textile-to-textile recycling by complicating fibre identification and contaminating feedstocks. Among 92 trims catalogued, only 29 were flagged as potentially recyclable—usually when sharing composition with target fibres. Yet without harmonised digital product passports or common recycler specifications, these theoretical gains remain impractical. Sorting facilities still default to removing all trims, sacrificing yield and recyclability efficiency.
- Polyester threads, coatings, and labels frequently alter fibre purity, forcing sorters to disqualify garments that would otherwise meet recycler specifications for mechanical or chemical recovery.
- Most preprocessing systems prioritise contamination avoidance, removing every non-fabric component regardless of recyclability potential—leading to increased fibre loss and higher operational costs.
- Inconsistent recycler specifications prevent sorters from standardising feedstock preparation, resulting in fragmented supply, duplicated effort, and limited material interoperability across recycling facilities.
- Recyclers demand precise fibre compositions and contamination thresholds that sorters cannot uniformly deliver, creating systemic inefficiencies and discouraging large-scale investment in preprocessing technology.
MODELS THAT WORK: Case studies from the CSTIM report illustrate how manual sorting and automated preprocessing can complement each other in scaling textile-to-textile recycling. Homeboy Threads and Looptworks combine social enterprise models with commercial operations, while Valvan supplies automation technology that links sorting accuracy with feedstock consistency. Together, they demonstrated how decentralised infrastructure and incremental innovation can build regional circular systems without losing quality or traceability.
- Homeboy Threads integrates training and re-entry employment with sorting and preprocessing for major apparel brands, creating traceable, socially driven feedstock hubs across Southern California.
- Looptworks applies modular mechanical recycling to convert pre- and post-consumer textiles into fibre, advocating localised circular hubs to reduce logistics and contamination.
- Valvan’s Fibersort and TrimClean technologies use AI and near-infrared detection to identify fibre types and remove trims, improving throughput and contaminant control for recyclers.
- Each model underscores the need for stable feedstock demand, shared quality standards, and co-investment between brands, recyclers, and technology providers to reach commercial scale.