as you're watching dw news coming up next, plymouth, a looks at solutions to the mounting problem, recycling our old clothes on. terry martin, thanks for watching the and reaching out to the special hot spots in germany. dw travel extremely. we're a bit like buying new clothes. don't worry, you're not alone and shopping, it's never been easier. fashions gotten faster and more disposable every year. roughly $100000000000.00 garments are produced and the majority of them end up in

a landfill within a year. and that looks about as bleak as you'd expect. but new technologies could allow us to trim that number significant. could they turn our towering heaps of distorted textiles into useful green materials and help cut down on this insane waste? and how hard could it really be to recycle clothes? the good news for all the optimists out there. the fashion industry has a boundless room for improvement, especially since the rise of fast fashion, which we outlined in this report, roughly 10 percent of all global carbon emission stem from the textile industry. it's also incredibly resource intensive guzzling up roughly 90000000000 cubic meters, water annually. that's 4 percent of global fresh water usage in

a lot more than water goes into producing our clothes. almost always these and, but he does go through heavy heavy, the chemical processes to make them the way they are today. whether it's finishing, whether it's dying, priyanka kind of collaborate with brands and producers to foster sustainable innovation in fashion. which is why it is mostly not even the nation between those onto the di biodegradable and it takes sometimes over to 100 years for these materials to buy it as a degraded industrial. and that's a big problem because we produce a whole lot of textile waste. in the us, the text always has grown 80 percent since the year 2000. rachel can be run circular services group, which supports industry and government and reaching sustainability goals. it is our fastest growing waste stream we send over $30000000000.00 pounds of tech styles to landfill every year in the us alone. most of our old clothes end up in landfills

what doesn't is frequently burned and sold stock and donated old clothing are frequently shipped to the global south for resale, such as here. and i'm gonna, we're 40 percent of what arrives is actually considered trash on arrival. to us, since more than 600000000 kilograms of used clothing abroad every year, largely to the rest of the americas or europe, exports more than 1500000000 kilos. with much of it ending up in africa waste. and these regions winds up being dumps burned or polluting oceans and waterways. tech style waste isn't just old. well worn clothes that are ready for retirement. it also includes excess stock and the scraps generated during production. less than one percent of the some of the, the, the spike going today. which means all of this is going somewhere. when we collect close there, primarily going to be sorted for reuse. that's the highest value. some of those plus may be down cycle and so in relations some may be sold as wiper rags and then

a small portion and can be mechanically recycled. but mechanical recycling has its limitations. in 2024. mechanical recycling is the best option we have and that would shopping close up and spinning them into new fibers is way better than landfills. it often means that degradation in quality, and it's rare that such materials can be recycled again. but that could change soon . there are a bunch of exciting new recycling companies, boasting new technology modeling for funding, and hoping to tailor a future for tech. so it's chemical recycling or text. those are broken down to the molecular level and then rebuilt into a range of materials is being counted as a better solution. or some companies only recycle caught in australia as block techs can recycle blended material, treading waste and then chemically breaking down. assignments and separating polyester from cellulose. a key natural or synthetic cotton polyester is converted

into pellets which can be used for textiles or us materials. in constructions, all cellulose is turned into clay that has use cases in textiles, agriculture and even packaging. the flexibility is intentional. i would never want to be beholden from light outtakes just to one brand, because i know how badly those those brands can be. hi, adrian jones, co founded block text in 2018. wait this the block text or how that takes that can be useful to many rods and just be useful to want. i think that's been a real difference for us in the industry. everybody's is preoccupied with making more textiles. log text recently announced an expansion of capacity to $10000.00 tons a year. berlin's refresh, global also emphasizes flexibility using a biotech approach. bacteria breaks down in sanitizer textile waste, creating 3 raw materials, no, no, cellulose. ethanol and sanitized. textile polt,

3 refresh global's partners. these materials are used to make anything ranging from furniture, to bike frames, to ethanol based cosmetics. refresh, global is a newer company, even many competitors and plans on developing a network of smaller facilities that can be developed quickly and flexibly with partners. that is a very different tack than sweden's renew cell. one of the world's biggest chemical tech stall recyclers. it was among the 1st building, industrial scale, commercial tech style recycling facility. here context i was shredded into a slurry, separated from any contaminants, and then dried into sheets of what they called circulars, circular, cellulose, which could replace bridge and materials like cotton, oil or wood in the production of new high quality textiles. going down to the molecular level helps maintain quality and renew, so we'll set it circulars can go through the recycling process. 7 times there were

limitations though they could only recycle waste that's 95 percent or if you're caught and meaning lots of what spilling land towards wasn't eligible in the 1st place. for new selves recycling plant opened in 2022 to the capacity to recycle 60000 tons annually and room to expand the 120000. but there's a reason on using the past tense here. the renew sells and they should meet at a beacon in the industry. it wasn't rewarded. renew, so shocking me. filed for bankruptcy in february 2024. just days before the announcement renew, so told dw, they were recycling far below capacity and fashion brands were hesitant to fully commit to recycle materials. we could be producing a lot more. tricia kerry is renew. so as chief commercial officer, many of the brands have goals set for circularity, reduction, traceability waterfalls. uh, you know, variety, it's,

we are a solution to their polls. it's how quickly do they want to be able to achieve those renew. so partnered with brands like levi has to recycle production waste and include circulars in their products h and then became a shareholder in 2017. it wasn't enough to make the plant profitable in its 1st year for new, so called their bankruptcy, a testament to the lack of leadership in necessary pace, of change in the fashion industry, renew, soul struggles, highlight the challenges facing recyclers. it has been something that has shown most of us were getting us has been a relative fixed task. theresa dominic researches sustainability management at u. c . l. existing business models in which most of fashion brands are messed it. they don't really have 40 initiatives night when you sell the to really well do to really be able to to make

a while recycled materials mean less reliance on water hungry cotton or oil based synthetics. they're currently more expensive. the challenges scale. the challenge is really getting it out into the world in a way and at a price point that can compete with version fibers. and so we're at a key inflection point. now. mechanical recycling has gained the limited foothold in the last decade in innovation on the chemical side means there are lots of companies racing to scale up, but it's even profitability before widespread adoption is clearly a challenge. maybe you'd also say that we need to be more um support from the government and dominic bodies to make these things where it could be waiting on a purely uh, business base um disruption. they might not work and assist them the best i have. the conditions we might need to have those by it is through the 1st stages of

development to it's not just about getting the recycling technology right. entire sprawling supply chains have to be adapted to accommodate new materials. waste needs to be seamlessly collected, sorted and processed in producers and consumers, all need to get on board. all of this requires half the investment. an estimated 7000000000 euros would be needed to scale up recycling, hit 20 percent of text or waste in europe by 2030. and while there's plenty of vc cash moving in to be started, renew, sol, shows a profit upsets fast in industry, won't recycle out of the kindness of its heart. there isn't enough push from the legislation side to force the industry to actually adopt these materials. so not the investigation required forcing, but if it's going to be more expensive material, if it's the transition with the houses of the suppliers, the thing is naisha with all the brands that they decided and across the board,

it really does is a function of inflammation. so have them having access to everything, which is not easily done until legislation usually takes that o. d, u has mandated that by 2025 member countries begin collecting text always separately, just like they do with paper, metal, plastic, and glass, which should improve on the 22 percent of waste that's currently gathered during proposed legislation in the us, the e u is also molding a rule that requires producers to pay for the processing of their tech style. we just we have to ensure that these laws don't just charge the producers for one portion of that puzzle. like just collection. it has to also facilitate the infrastructure for both reuse and recycling and the innovation around that. as it stands, recycling isn't profitable. state actors could also set the tone by adopting targets themselves. recycling for recycling site. it gives the nice is way to go

broke really quickly. you know, because every party want you to recycle. everybody wants you to solve the consumption built. but for us to be successful, as a result of that, we have to have committee that takes and that's where government and private enterprise has a role to apply. in saying that a government the chicks is very large procures of products. 70 percent of text are recycling is currently mechanical, but that looks likely to change things to all the new chemical recycling companies . i'm a seem really boosting are recycling rates depends on changing the industries whole infrastructure. but just adding a couple of new technologies. things are currently so diary that recycling just 10 percent of global text always seems nearly you've totally get and this will still just be a drop in the bucket if we keep producing and singing the amounts of clothing. which depressing spoiler alert is projected to actually increase in the coming

years. recycling is only one part of the problem of a current consumption backend of cannot continue if you want to move to what the most sustainable of industrial. there is a huge amount of, of production in the industry and to whoever is responsible for that. it's just a lot of debated on that. bottom line is that a little production needs to, to, to use that 100000000000 garments we produce each year, means 14 for everyone in the world. if we can convince fashion victims to stop buying their body weight, including at least we can insure that as much as possible of what they purchase is recycled. well, i've done my part by having 0 pass and cents and walking around and around the old t shirts. what do you think? can you recycling technologies help save the textile industry? or is it totally down to us consumers? thanks a lot and don't forget to subscribe. we've got new videos for you. every 5. the

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