To scale up the depolymerisation of post-consumer textile waste in Europe, the barriers of accessibility and affordability must be addressed. This requires coordinated action by policy and industry on ten interdependent levers that should be activated together to reach a tipping point, says a report.
The existing depolymerisation technologies are both environmentally attractive and technically capable of producing virgin-equivalent outputs, with the potential to significantly reduce the negative consequences of burgeoning textile waste and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to virgin polyester production. However, despite its attractiveness, depolymerisation is not yet scaling, the report—The Textile Recycling Breakthrough: Why policy must lead the scale-up of polyester recycling in Europe—by Systemiq laments.
- To reach a tipping point for mass adoption – where recycling polyester waste through depolymerisation becomes more competitive than virgin polyester production from fossil fuels – two more conditions must be met: affordability and accessibility.
Affordability remains the most significant constraint: Producing recycled polyester from post-consumer textile waste in Europe costs around 2.6 times more than the average cost of virgin polyester in Asia.
Accessibility challenges exist on both the supply and demand side. On the supply side, access to textile waste feedstock at the necessary quality and quantity for at-scale recycling remains out of sight. On the demand side, the current premium of ~2.6× means that most brands continue to favour cheaper virgin polyester or recycled polyester from PET beverage bottles, while the production value chain has little incentive to incorporate this material on its own accord.
- Without targeted policy action to address both affordability and accessibility, depolymerisation will remain stuck in pilot purgatory, and the breakthrough to mass adoption will not happen.
- Without a recycling system, the linear status quo will continue to deepen Europe’s – and the world's – textile waste crisis. The report suggests 10 levers to trigger a tipping point: policy and industry action needed across four areas. These are:
Implement design for recycling: Design for recycling is a foundational step. Promoting more sustainable textile design by using a limited range of materials, avoiding fibre blends that are hard to recycle, selecting dyes and additives that do not hinder recycling, avoiding glued components, using materials identifiable by recyclers, and avoiding coated materials can dramatically increase the recyclability of garments.
- Experts suggest that approximately 1/3 of textile products could be redesigned without compromising functionality. This is a low-cost intervention that directly improves sorting, pre-processing, and recycling inefficiencies – making feedstock easier and cheaper to process.
Establish widespread separate collection: Widespread separate collection and consumer awareness are essential to raising feedstock quantity and diverting it from incineration or landfill. By implementing EPR systems across Member States and embedding them into everyday infrastructure – through nationwide bring-points and civic amenity sites – the EU can significantly increase separate collection rates.
- With accompanying awareness campaigns to reduce contamination, average EU collection rates are assumed to reach 43% by 2030 and 50% by 2035, but will have a significant ramp-up period. This approach to implementing the existing EU Waste Framework Directive mandate for separate collection could substantially increase textile waste volumes available for processing.
- However, greater volumes of collection alone are not enough – quality and system efficiency must also improve. Next to post-consumer textile waste, recyclers could source non-rewearable technical textiles to increase scale (not modelled).
Set standards for sorting for recycling: Standardisation of feedstock specifications, where possible can enable these volumes to translate into high-quality, high-quantity input for recyclers. Today, the recycling value chain is fragmented: some depolymerisers integrate pre-processing, while others rely on external sorters. This creates inefficiencies and investment uncertainty.
- In addition, quality specifications of feedstock volumes are neither standardised nor transparent, with associated sourcing uncertainties for both sorters for recycling (what kind and level of contaminants are included) and recyclers. Agreeing on feedstock specifications and aligning upstream and downstream roles would increase facility throughput, reduce transaction costs, facilitate market making and liquidity, and improve asset utilisation.
Establish clarity on trade: Clarity on trade rules for the export of textile waste is a final enabling condition for feedstock access. Setting precise legal boundaries that define the "end of waste" and distinguish reusables and recycled polyester pellets from waste would allow only reusable materials or recycled polyester to be exported.
- These would need to be aligned with import regulations in countries with polymerisation and yarn-making facilities. This creates certainty for investors and helps domestic automated sorting scale to 1.8 million tonnes per year by 2035 (if other levers like EPR financing are implemented).
- Together, these four levers could address the systemic fragmentation that currently limits feedstock availability (while not overlooking financing issues related to the gap in unit economics identified above). But to scale depolymerisation, strong downstream demand is just as essential
TEAM & FUNDING: Systemiq core team: Sophie Herrmann, Clara Luckner, Carl Kuehl, Leonard von Boetticher, Juliette Kool and Ulrike Stein.
- This work was made possible by grants from: Arc’teryx, Eastman, Interzero, Textile Exchange and Tomra.
ABOUT: Systemiq is a systems change company that works with businesses, policymakers, investors and civil society organisations to reimagine and reshape the systems that sit at the heart of society — energy, nature and food, materials, built environment, and finance - to accelerate the shift to a more sustainable and inclusive economy. Founded in 2016, Systemiq is a certified B Corp with offices in Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the UK.
