Ondemand textile waste collection
active 1 year agoThe fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. It accounts up to 10 % of global greenhouse gases and it is one of the major contributors of plastic micofibres entering to the sea. Every second, the equivalent of a truck load of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill. As the consumption of clothes increases globally, there are more and more raw materials used and more and more truck loads. Less than 1 % of the old clothes are reused as clothes and just 12 % of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled. Recycling requires that textile waste is collected and therefore, the EU demands that the Member States must establish systems for the separate collection of textiles by 2025. The collection of textile waste is one thing, the usability of waste and the technologies to do that another. It is clear that all the BSR countries must, improve their systems to collect textile waste. But how can it be done the most effectively, in a way that the quality of waste meets the demand of recycling textile industry? Can it be done in local/national/regional level, in order to avoid transporting textile waste for a long way? Is there a possibilty for cross-boundary cooperation in terms of creating joint definition and practice of how and under which conditions used textiles are collected, how can/must they be sorted and treated. And there is always need to raise public awareness of reasons to recycle, how to recycle and about the four R’s of sustainable fashion: reduce, reuse, repair and in the end, recycle.
