There's both good news and bad news when it comes to European actors working with sorting and recycling of textiles.
- The good news is that "today’s clothes often consist of several fibre types, something that is difficult to manage with today’s sorting and recycling techniques." However, "there is great potential for scaling up, given that there is high quality material on the market."
- The broad assertions are from the study Sustainable clothing futures: Mapping of textile actors in sorting and recycling of textiles in Europe, published earlier this month.
The Study: The report mentioned is part of a series of reports under the project Sustainable Clothing Futures.
The project with four partners: IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Profu, Lund University and the Swedish School of Textiles, funded by Formas.
- The new report has been written by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. The authors are Maja Dahlbom, Ida Aguilar Johansson and Tova Billstein.
- The study had two main research objectives: (i) Identify and map European actors in the textile sorting and recycling industry, as well as to further study current capacities and future scaling projections of selected actors in depth; and (ii) Identify emerging initiatives globally, focusing on innovative collection methodology, automated sorting development, and novel recycling technologies.
The Findings: The 54-page report was packed with information:
- The mapping identified 43 actors. Nine of these are manual sorters, five automatic sorters, 25 mechanical recyclers, 10 chemical recyclers and one thermal recycler.
- The number of manual sorters is most likely higher, but due to lack of information about them only twelve could be identified.
- Italy has the most sorting and recycling actors, of which a majority are mechanical recyclers. The Netherlands has second to most actors, with both manual and automatic sorters and mechanical and chemical recyclers. Only one thermal recycler could be identified—an actor based in Spain.
- The number of collectors varies greatly within each country in Europe, with both locally centralised collectors per each country (for example charities’ containers and in-store collection), as well as some common stakeholders also working internationally (Human Bridge, Red Cross etc.).
- Few countries in Europe have a separate collection structure set up for textiles that is easily available for residents. One example of this is France, which has a national Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for textiles and footwear that has been in place since 2007.
- The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) imported over 90,000 tonnes of used textiles in 2018 for the purpose of sorting or processing. All three are among the top five importers in Europe in terms of kg per capita: Lithuania at number one, followed by the Netherlands, Latvia, Estonia, and Hungary.
- The total capacity for the seven sorters sorting post-consumer textiles was estimated at 560,000 tonnes per year from now to 2025, of which 230,000 tonnes would be automatic sorting.
- Several established as well as emerging recycling actors were identified within Europe, showing that mechanical recycling is more common than chemical recycling (25 vs 10 actors).
- The researchers identified 12 sorting actors, with a total capacity of 560,000 tonnes per year from now up to 2025. The actual sorting capacity in Europe is estimated to be significantly higher as the manual sorting actors were difficult to identify.
- Further, 33 recycling actors were identified and are at a commercial scale in fibre-to-fibre recycling post-consumer textiles in Europe, with a total capacity of 1.3 million tonnes per year from now up to 2025.
- There are many actors in the research and development phase of textile recycling, who were not included in this mapping.
- Many actors promise large capacities within a few years, and together with the upcoming requirement of separate collection of textiles in 2025 in the EU, the textile sorting and recycling industry in Europe will most likely thrive moving forward.
