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Sustainability

Fashion’s Recycling Start-Ups Inch Closer to Commercialisation

Over the last month, a flurry of companies with backers from H&M to Inditex have advanced plans to build their first industrial-scale textile-to-textile recycling plants, advancing a technology that is often held up as a holy-grail-like solution to many of fashion’s environmental ills.
A man in work overalls and a hard hat feeds material into a machine for recycling.
Textile-to-textile recyclers like Inditex-backed Circ are moving closer to reaching industrial scale. (GEOFF WOOD)
By
BoF PROFESSIONAL

For years, the fashion industry has held up new textile recycling technologies as an almost holy-grail-like solution to many of the industry’s environmental ills. But proving out this theory by bringing promising innovations to commercial scale has proved long and fraught.

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Further Reading

Is Fast Fashion Worth Recycling?

As the EU seeks to crack down on a growing glut of clothing waste, the rise of low-value ultra-fast-fashion, along with increased competition and geopolitical disruption, are putting pressure on the economics of collecting, sorting and recycling used textiles.

About the author
Sarah Kent
Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent is Chief Sustainability Correspondent at The Business of Fashion. She is based in London and drives BoF's coverage of critical environmental and labour issues.

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