8.1 Recycling

Recycling of textiles is still limited. A small part of clothing is resold in vintage shops and exported abroad. A small part is used in insulation felt and a somewhat larger part is used in cleaning cloths, in total about 12%.^[1] More than half of discarded textiles are currently incinerated (with energy recovery).

Increasingly, high-value recycling from textile to textile is being looked at. This is reasonably possible if the textile consists of a single material or group of materials, such as cellulose, polyester, polyamide. These are so called mono-material streams.^[2] However, textiles today are mostly made of a mixture of 2 or more different raw materials; for example, cotton-polyester, cotton-elastane, cotton-polyester-elastane; or provided with a coating or other post-treatment agent. High-quality recycling requires the ability to properly separate these different raw materials from textiles. This is greatly complicated by the fact that the different fibre materials in textiles are intimately mixed or have a finish or coating that makes recycling expensive and energy-intensive.

High-quality recycling is desirable partly because demand for cotton exceeds supply. Instead, synthetic fibres are more and more blended in. However, these synthetic fibres are often plastics of fossil origin, difficult to separate as blended fibres and thus not very circular.

Using fibres from one group of materials such as cotton, viscose, flax and hemp enables recycling in 2 ways: mechanical and chemical. In mechanical recycling, fibres are isolated from textiles. With each recycling, the fibres become slightly shorter, reducing the quality of the final product. Hemp fibres (and flax), on the other hand, are on average very long and therefore expected to be recyclable more often.

Several cellulose-based materials (cotton, viscose, bamboo, flax and hemp), also when unsorted, can be chemically recycled into cellulose products such as lyocell or viscose (§8.2).

Good recycling starts with proper design of material, fabric and garment, as well as sorted reuse or disposal policies. And, of course, consumer behaviour is also key.

Infinite recycling is not possible; the quality of the raw material gradually decreases through use and recycling processes. This means that new raw material will always remain necessary, in smaller quantities though. Efficient use of raw materials therefore also requires a long lifetime in the use phase.

[1] https://edepot.wur.nl/517183

[2] https://edepot.wur.nl/553932