Increasing textile circulation—Consequences and requirements

Abstract

The global textile fiber production, consumption of textiles and amounts of textile waste are constantly growing. The increase of textile waste has also been demonstrated in sorting studies performed for the municipal solid waste, where the share of textiles has grown. Ideally, recycling and, even more so, reusing textiles can reduce the production of new textiles from virgin materials and hence reduce the use of water, energy and chemicals in the production chain. The aim of the study was to ascertain the flows of textiles and textile waste currently in Finland and assess the environmental performance of the current system. In addition, the possible consequences of a significant increase in the reuse or recycling of discarded textiles were analyzed. Finally, an assessment on the policy measures available for increasing textile circulation was performed.An account of the textiles and textile waste flows in Finland in 2012 showed that roughly 20% of discarded textiles were collected separately by charity organizations and directed mainly towards reuse. Only a few percent of the overall flow was recycled. The majority of the discarded textiles were collected in municipal solid waste (MSW) and incinerated with energy recovery. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of the current situation and two comparing scenarios showed that environmental benefits could be obtained by increasing the separate collection of discarded textiles and their reuse or recycling. The results were dominated by the benefits potentially obtained from compensating virgin textile production with reuse or recycling. However, it is not known how much textile reuse actually compensates virgin production, or whether it simply generates new markets and adds to the overall demand and consumption of textiles. Similarly, there are uncertainties about whether recycled fibers can replace virgin fibers due to the fact that chemical recycling processes are still being developed. Research and development activities are already in progress for increasing the circulation of textiles. While developing the textile chain it must be taken into account that the whole chain for collecting, sorting, separating and recovering needs to be developed simultaneously and the operations optimized in order to keep environmental impacts to a minimum.Well-accepted voluntary producer responsibility could be one way to increase the collection of discarded textiles, but it requires the engagement of producers, operators and consumers. The use of recycling criteria in public procurements to enhance recycling requires an increase of recycled products in the market and advice for procurers.Both increased reuse and increased recycling require major changes to the current system and the engagement of all operators of the textile chain.