Textile Reuse Is not Damaged, However the Narrative Round It Is

In an trade obsessive about next-gen recycling applied sciences and circularity buzzwords, the present world system for textile reuse is usually missed—or worse, misunderstood.

That’s based on Brian London, president of the Secondary Supplies and Recycled Textiles (SMART) Affiliation, who argues that misunderstandings and misplaced priorities are clouding the fact of how textile waste is definitely managed at present.  

On the heart of that misunderstanding is a primary query: What really counts as waste? In accordance with London, the query isn’t philosophical as a result of its reply is financial. 

“It’s basically a market-driven course of,” he stated. “What’s ‘rewearable’ is outlined by the individual shopping for it.”

Sorting operations, he defined, are extremely aggressive and tightly calibrated. A cargo mislabeled as high-quality wearable items gained’t promote—and repeat errors rapidly push operators out of enterprise. In different phrases, the market enforces its personal high quality management.

That actuality complicates the trade’s fixation on recycling, significantly the push towards closed-loop programs that promise to show previous clothes into new ones.

“We shouldn’t fetishize it on the expense of reuse,” London stated. “Closed-loop recycling doesn’t exist at scale but. Reuse is economically and socially a greater use of that merchandise proper now.”  

The hierarchy, in his view, is easy: reuse first, then discover different options for what stays. Nonetheless, the dialog doesn’t finish there. Critics typically level to the downstream impacts of exported secondhand clothes, significantly in international locations with restricted waste-management infrastructure.

London doesn’t dismiss the priority—however he reframes duty.

“If I discover a market the place an merchandise might be reused, is it my duty to handle the way it’s disposed of three steps down the road?” he stated, noting that present economics don’t assist that degree of oversight.

As a substitute, he sees Prolonged Producer Accountability (EPR) as a possible lever—if deployed in another way. Quite than funneling funds into extra assortment infrastructure in Western markets, he argues that these assets ought to be directed towards constructing waste administration programs within the international locations receiving the clothes.  

That shift would additionally acknowledge a broader fact: textile waste is as a lot a manufacturing drawback as it’s a disposal one.

“Everybody focuses on the textiles,” London stated. “However the root is overproduction—particularly gadgets made with polyester and supplies which are robust to take care of at finish of life.”

Layered on prime of that may be a knowledge drawback. London factors to 1 statistic specifically—a extensively cited declare that solely 15 p.c of clothes is donated—as emblematic of the problem.

“You see it in all places,” he stated. “However in the event you attempt to discover the precise research or methodology behind it, it’s virtually unimaginable.”

As soon as embedded in trade discourse, he added, these figures tackle a lifetime of their very own—no matter accuracy. The identical goes for the narrative that secondhand exports quantity to “sending issues away.”

“The largest customers of American used clothes are literally People,” London stated. “In locations like El Salvador, persons are lining up for these shipments; it’s virtually like a ‘Black Friday’ second for these communities.”

For him, the fact is extra nuanced than both aspect of the controversy tends to confess.

“Now we have to carry two truths without delay,” he stated. “There are failures within the system, but it surely additionally offers an enormous environmental profit for each merchandise that will get re-worn.”

Leaning too far in the wrong way, he warned, dangers undermining a system that—whereas imperfect—is already delivering outcomes at scale.

“If we push the concept it’s all waste,” London stated, “we’re going to destroy a reuse system that’s working much better than something we’re attempting to construct from scratch.”