Our textile consumption is one of the world's biggest climate impacts. Second only to the impact of food production, energy and transportation. In the EU, we throw away 5 million tons of clothing every year. That's 12 kg per person, of which only 30-35% is collected. The rest ends up in landfill or incineration.
The vast majority of the textiles we throw away today are not recycled. Every second, the equivalent of a truckload of textiles is burned or landfilled worldwide.
"It's mind-blowing how many resources we use to produce clothes that are just thrown away. I think the scale of the problem and how little the clothes are used surprises many people who have not dealt with the issue before." (Birgitte Hee Olesen, Project Manager for SorTex)
Since 1975, the world's production of textile fibers has almost quadrupled and production is still increasing. By 2030, it is estimated that the production of textile fibers will have increased to 145 million tons worldwide. This is a global problem that requires global solutions.
The problem is also reflected in our private consumption of clothing. On average, a piece of clothing is worn 8 times before being thrown away and each citizen generates an average of 12 kg of textile waste per year. Of this, only 30-35% is collected and a much smaller proportion is reused or recycled.
The scale of the textile challenge is huge and needs to be addressed across the entire value chain - from when clothes are designed, produced, sold, used, recycled and end up as waste.
As part of the solution, the EU Waste Directive states that from 2025, all member states will have to collect textile waste separately and locally, and a ban on shipping it out of the EU will be implemented. However, this alone is not enough to solve the problem. It is expected that 1.4 million tons of non-reusable textiles will hit the European market by 2025 when all member states start sorting textiles.
With the textile challenge we are facing, it is important that we find smart solutions and ways to collect, pre-sort, recycle and reuse textile waste.
Today, a large part of our textile consumption follows a linear economy - that is, we buy clothes, use them and then throw them away. With SorTex, the hope is that our consumption of textiles will eventually follow a circular economy, preferably reused as they are, repaired or alternatively recycled to produce new products or materials that can be resold and thus become part of a new circular economy.
