We’re living in a crisis of clothes wastage, and the barriers to efficient recycling systems don’t help. Why is recycling clothes so hard? And what can we do to help reduce the amount of clothing that ends up in landfill?
Why are clothes so hard to recycle?
One of the reasons that clothing is so difficult to recycle is that most items are made from a blend of many fibres. Even a 100% cotton item will have thread and labels made from different materials. The sorting of fabrics is labour-intensive and requires skill.
Then, the actual process of recycling the fibres is, itself, costly and time-consuming, and even includes removing the dye. Clothes can be recycled via chemical or mechanical recycling, both of which have significant limitations
What’s the alternative?
Choosing high-quality, timeless items that you’ll wear for years is preferable to buying low-quality, trendy items that you might only wear for a year or that might depreciate quickly.
Reusing clothes, rather than recycling them, is another option. Set up a clothes pool with friends and swap items around once you get bored of them. You can also donate clothes to charities or sell them online.
It’s also worth making your own clothes. These tend to have a sentimental value and therefore don’t get thrown away. In addition, you can ensure you make them with just one type of fibre, like Aran yarn from a specialist supplier such as https://www.woolcouturecompany.com/collections/aran-yarn.
Sometimes, however, clothing is in such a state of disrepair that it really is time to get rid of it. In this instance, it should be placed in your local clothing recycling bin. Whatever you do, avoid putting unwanted clothing into your general waste, which is where the vast majority of global clothing ends up.
The recycling of clothing is one of the biggest waste challenges of our time. The effectiveness and efficiency of recycling clothing is a significant barrier to improvement in this area. The biggest issue, however, is usage, which means we need to be more selective in our clothes-buying decision process.