Textile and Clothes Recycling

Nearly every type of fabric is recyclable, but some kinds aren’t reusable. Fabric that isn’t recycled will end up in landfill. Textiles and clothes in landfill are a real problem as they sit there and slowly decompose. This can take decades, particularly for artificial fabrics. In other cases, fabric waste that’s not recycled may be incinerated.

Cotton and thread take a few months to decompose, while synthetics like polyester can take hundreds of years. For this reason, it’s important to ensure whoever disposes of your commercial fabric waste – whether it’s you, your local council, or a private company – focuses on recycling whatever they possibly can.

Yes, cotton can be recycled alongside other textiles and fabrics. Recycling one tonne of cotton can save 765,000 litres of water. However, producing recycled cotton is limited, as the quality can be lower than creating clothing and garments from new cotton. Therefore, it’s often blended with new cotton to form fresh products.

Cotton can be recycled in two ways:

• Pre-consumer recycled cotton – waste cotton is processed to create new fibres.
• Post-consumer recycled cotton – existing cotton is broken down and repurposed to form new fibres.

You can recycle old towels alongside other types of waste textiles, fabrics, and clothing as they’re generally made from similar fibres. It’s important you ensure they’re clean and dry to avoid introducing any contaminants. Otherwise, throw them into a textile bin and they’ll be processed and recycled in the same way as other textiles.

With old paper towels these normally go in with general waste. This is because they’re made from fibres that are too small to be of use when recycling. Used paper towels may be wet and contaminated so can’t usually go in with your dry mixed recycling.

Yes, you can recycle polyester, but it follows a slightly different process to recycling other fabrics. You can recycle polyester clothing and items in a textile or clothing recycling bin as normal. They’ll be sorted and separated from other fabrics at the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and then be recycled in one of two ways:

• Mechanical recycling – the plastics in polyester are melted down to create new yarn, which can only happen a few times as fibres lose their quality.
• Chemical recycling – this breaks down the plastic molecules and forms them into new yarn for use creating fresh products.

Textile waste is a huge problem as when it’s not recycled or reused it ends up in landfill, where it can take more than 200 years to decompose. During this time it can contribute to greenhouse gases and chemicals from the dyes may leach into surrounding soil and water, causing pollution.

For businesses, you’ll have to pay extra landfill tax for sending more waste fabrics to landfill too. Plus, producing new textiles requires a lot more water and materials compared to making them from recycled fabrics. This is less environmentally friendly and costlier for all involved. Recycling textiles avoids contributing to landfill, saves water and costs your business less.

In the UK you should not put clothes in your recycling bin at home. They may not be recycled and end up in landfill if you do. Instead you can recycle old clothes by donating to a charity shop or taking to a household waste recycling centre near you that has specific bins and facilities in place to recycle clothes and textiles.

If you run a business, arrange delivery of clothes recycling bins to your premises to easily sort, store, and dispose of old and damaged clothes in an eco-friendly way.

Yes, recycling damaged clothes is possible for any items that you can’t donate or repair. You may be able to give them to an animal shelter to use as bedding or other charities might accept them to transform into things like face masks, cleaning cloths, and padding for chairs.

Recycling damaged clothes that are beyond repair or reuse is also possible though. Throw such items away with other bits of waste fabric and textiles in your clothing recycling bins and they’ll be transported to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) for sorting and processing. Often they’ll be shredded and cleaned to create new fabrics.