Why is clothing recycling still so difficult (and how can it be improved)?

It's spring, so time to clear out the wardrobe. What do you do with that shirt you bought three years ago but never wore, or those jeans that now have a hole in them? Since last year, Europe has had a collection obligation and every municipal council must provide collection points for textiles. This is where you take your old clothes and where the route to reuse and recycling starts. And yet that recycling does not seem to have had much success: only one percent of the world's used clothing is recycled into new clothing. So what happens to the rest, and how can we do better?

Having deposited a pair of old trousers in a textile bin, you might imagine that they are being melted down into a new garment in some factory somewhere. In reality, this is only the case for a small proportion of clothes. Our discards in the bin can follow different routes. Some get a new owner, for example through second-hand shops or export abroad. Clothing that is too contaminated eventually ends up in the incinerator. Other garments are recycled. Most end up as cleaning cloths, padding or insulation material. This is called open-loop recycling: The material is given a new use, but no longer as clothing. 

That's because ‘making clothes from clothes' is much more complex in practice than it sounds. To make cleaning cloths from old textiles, the clothes only need to be cut up. Compress textiles into a sheet and you have insulation material. But turning them into new clothes requires a more complex process in which machines tear garments apart into loose fibres. During that process, however, these fibres often lose strength and length. To restore them into strong yarn, manufacturers have to mix in new fibres. Meanwhile, experiments are also being conducted with chemical recycling. That form of recycling offers opportunities, but is currently in its infancy. 

Marieke Brouwer, research associate in Sustainable Products & Systems at WUR, highlights a fundamental design problem. Many modern garments consist of so-called blends: blends of different fibres, such as cotton, polyester and elastane woven together. That can be useful, says Brouwer: “Some elastane in our jeans makes them stretchy, which feels nice for the person wearing them." Other blends make production cheaper or clothes wrinkle-free. But these blends of materials are complicating the recycling process. 

Brouwer’s new research shows that about half of all T-shirts, shorts and long-sleeved garments consist of such blends. For long trousers, that proportion rises to as much as 77 percent. “These materials are often difficult or impossible to separate properly," says Brouwer. Not to mention everything attached to clothes. Zips, buttons, sequins, labels and coatings need to be removed before recycling can start at all. And that is time consuming, costs money and uses energy. Extra layers, such as linings in blazers, are also a challenge. “These are typically items that we do not convert into new clothing, but compress into insulation material,” says Brouwer. 

The solution seems obvious: make clothing simpler. Fewer materials, fewer additions and more so-called mono-materials - clothes made from a single type of fibre. That makes recycling technically much easier. “It is much simpler to process a T-shirt made of 100 percent cotton or viscose," says Brouwer. In reality, however, industry has little incentive to voluntarily switch to mono-materials. This is because blends are not only technically convenient, but also economically and culturally attractive: they make clothing production cheaper, clothing more comfortable or give it a more luxurious look. And fashion, after all, is also about identity, about appearance and how you present yourself to the world. 

The role that clothing plays has changed dramatically within a few generations, says Wageningen-based consumer researcher Siet Sijtsema. “Around eighty years ago, most clothing consisted of mono-materials. With the rise of synthetic fibres in the 1960s, everything changed. The choice of materials exploded, prices fell and the number of collections per year increased.” Whereas the fashion industry used to present two collections a year, now there are new collections in the shops every week. 

“Our (great) grandparents lived in an age of scarcity,” says Sijtsema. “They therefore placed a very different value on clothing than the current generation. In those days, clothes were expensive and you repaired them if something happened to them. Moreover, that generation learned how to mend a garment at school. That knowledge has now largely disappeared. Replacing a damaged garment is often easier and sometimes even cheaper than having it repaired.” The low prices of fast fashion encourage this: repairing simply isn’t always financially viable anymore.

Governments are trying to adjust. From July this year, companies in the EU will no longer be allowed to destroy unsold clothes, a measure designed to put an end to the tacit incineration of surplus stocks. In addition, the EU is working on digital product passports, which will show consumers what materials have been used to make the garment and how it can be recycled. And since 2023, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requires clothing companies in the Netherlands to help pay for the collecting, sorting and recycling of their products. 

Brouwer is positive about the measures, but has concerns about the EPR. The system measures success based on reuse and recycling percentages: what percentage of what a producer sold on the market returns to the recycling circuit? The government previously applied this successfully to packaging, but the system cannot be transferred on a one-to-one basis, says the researcher. “There is an important difference between packaging and clothing,” she says. “A bottle or a box is often discarded within the same year that it is placed on the market. With clothing, this is not always the case: A coat, for example, can last for years. That difference in useful life makes it difficult to set and measure recycling targets.”

If policy only considers how much clothing enters the recycling process, it ignores clothing that remains in use for a long time: “Which is a shame, because although these items may not then be included in a recycling process, using your clothes for years is sustainable.” 

Besides recycling, reuse is an obvious solution: clothes that are still in good condition need not be discarded. Brouwer's research shows that we do not wear two to three out of every 10 garments in our wardrobe, even though they may be of excellent quality. “Such items are ideal for passing on or reselling to others,” says Brouwer. And we do, through Vinted or thrift shops. But there is a paradox there, Brouwer discovered: people are willing to offer their clothes for reuse, but buy very little second-hand themselves. As a result, less than one out of every 10 items in the wardrobe is second-hand. 

Sijtsema understands why. “Second-hand shopping is a fundamentally different process. There is usually only one particular item of clothing, so chances are it’s not your size. So it requires time and patience and you need to keep checking in the shop whether the type of garment you are looking for is now available.” Moreover, the environmental benefits may not be as straightforward as it seems. People shopping cheaply second-hand may just buy more, or spend the money they have saved on a new pair of trousers to go with that cute second-hand jumper.

So what can you do as a consumer to contribute to sustainability in clothing? According to Brouwer, this starts with being more conscious about clothing. “Choose items that last longer, wear what you already have and try to repair clothes (or have them repaired) where possible.” When buying new clothes, Brouwer says you should choose garments made of one type of fibre, such as cotton, viscose or wool. And if you throw away old clothes or textiles? “Take them to the textile bins. Only dispose of them with household waste if they are really contaminated.”

We not only need to recycle better, say the Wageningen researchers. “Above all, we need to handle clothes differently: first we need to buy less, design better with mono-materials and use clothes for longer.” Only then can we really come full circle and will garments increasingly end up in other people's wardrobes after a spring clear-out - either as second-hand or new.

• Scientific article: 
  Marieke T. Brouwer, Evelien Maaskant, Untangling textile waste flows: A detailed product and material flow analysis of Dutch clothing waste, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 234, 2026, 109030, ISSN 0921-3449