Sort to Sustain
To address the gaps in post-consumer feedstock for the development of textile-to-textile recycling in India, FFG has initiated the Sort to Sustain (STS) Project, in line with the broader ambition of the Re-START Alliance. This project focuses on enhancing the quantity, quality, and price of feedstock to support the recycling industry. The project aims to establish a circular textiles system in India by creating a robust collection and sorting ecosystem for widespread recycling implementation. Leveraging insights from the Sorting for Circularity India project, it seeks to scale sorting and pre-processing infrastructure. The goal is to support the expansion of at least four waste enterprises and set up their Textile Recovery Facilities (TRFs) by 2030.
What's the challenge?
As the fashion industry transitions toward circular models, scaling textile-to-textile (T2T) recycling depends on reliable access to high-quality post-consumer feedstock. While India generates significant volumes of textile waste, its post-consumer value chain remains fragmented, with organised sorting hubs and Textile Recovery Facilities (TRFs) still emerging. Insights from Sorting for Circularity India highlighted key barriers, including inconsistent material quality, insufficient aggregated volumes, pricing misalignment, and limited technical readiness for high-grade recycling. Strengthening collection, sorting, pre-processing systems along with stronger linkages between sorters, recyclers, and solution providers is critical to unlocking scalable recycling pathways.
Introduction
Sort to Sustain (S2S) connects recyclers and sorting enterprises, facilitates trials, and addresses technical bottlenecks that limit recycling readiness. By strengthening improvements across collection, sorting, and pre-processing systems, S2S helps unlock viable supply partnerships and supports the sorting ecosystem to reach the annual capacity to valorise ≥68k tonnes of domestic post-consumer textile waste, through enabling scalable feedstock systems with improved quantity, quality, and price alignment of post-consumer textiles.
Goals of the Project
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Supporting Recycling Scale-Up in India & Linkages to Sorters:
S2S supports recyclers exploring India as a sourcing and production hub for textile-to-textile recycling. This includes providing market intelligence on India’s post-consumer textile landscape, facilitating introductions to sorting enterprises and ecosystem actors, and organising feedstock trials to validate quality and performance. The project works toward securing Letters of Intent (LOIs) and enabling long-term supply agreements, reducing entry barriers and strengthening recycler confidence in India’s feedstock ecosystem.
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Strengthening Sorting & TRF Capabilities
The project supports sorting enterprises and emerging Textile Recovery Facilities (TRFs) in improving their operational capacity and market readiness. This includes facilitating direct connections with domestic and international recyclers, and piloting advanced sorting technologies (e.g., fibre scanning solutions). S2S also helps improve operations and material validation to increase feedstock quality, volumes, and price alignment. In addition, the project connects TRFs with innovators and downstream partners to strengthen market opportunities and ecosystem capabilities.
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Addressing Post-Consumer Feedstock Challenges
S2S works to identify and resolve technical bottlenecks limiting post-consumer textile recycling. This includes challenges related to fibre composition, contamination, blend complexity, and pre-processing inefficiencies. The project explores technical solutions such as Optical Brightener Agent (OBA) management and improved sorting methodologies, while facilitating knowledge exchange between recyclers and sorters.
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As part of this work, Fashion for Good aims to develop open-source tools and templates for textile waste segregation and processing, supporting TRFs and other ecosystem actors in handling complex textile materials and scaling best practices.
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Impact to Date
Sort to Sustain has established the foundation for scaling post-consumer textile feedstock in India by assessing the waste landscape, defining the implementation scope, and onboarding key stakeholders across waste enterprises, recyclers, and technology partners.
The project has initiated recycling workstreams, including feedstock validation discussions and trial planning, while supporting waste enterprises in refining business models and improving operational readiness. Ongoing engagement with recyclers and sorters is strengthening material quality, aggregation, and pricing alignment, with early steps taken toward structured trials and long-term supply pathways. Together, these efforts are building the ecosystem coordination and technical readiness required to enable scalable Textile-to-Textile recycling in India.
Get Involved
Are you a recycler, sorter, technology provider, or ecosystem partner looking to accelerate textile circularity in India? We’d love to connect.
Write to us: innovations@fashionforgood.com
Catalyst Funders
Implementation Partners
Innovators
Relevant Resources
Driving Circular Innovation Forward: Fashion for Good Welcomes New Partners to its Sorting for Circularity USA Project
New Partners Join the Sorting for Circularity Project
Sorting For Circularity Europe: Project findings highlight immense opportunity to accelerate textile recycling
Sorting For Circularity; Fashion for Good Launches New Project To Drive Textile Recycling
Sorting for Circularity Europe Expands to Address Rewearable Textile Crisis
Other Projects
Sorting for Circularity Rewear
Fashion for Good expanded its Sorting for Circularity framework to address the challenge of sorting for rewearable textiles to understand better their resale potential and the demand across the second-hand market. We launched an 18-month initiative in January 2024 in collaboration with Circle Economy, brand partners adidas, Inditex, Levi Strauss & Co. and Zalando to enhance the sorting of rewearable textiles using innovative AI technologies. The project seeks to improve garment recovery for resale, promoting circularity in the fashion industry.
Behind the Break
Behind the Break is a multi-phase research initiative developed by Fashion for Good in collaboration with The Microfibre Consortium. The project takes a research-led approach to advance the fashion industry’s understanding of fibre fragmentation, addressing uncertainties in existing testing protocols and key knowledge gaps. By supporting the development of a more credible and consistent foundation, the initiative aims to enable stakeholders to make informed decisions and take decisive action to mitigate fibre fragment pollution, while leveraging the best available science.
Behind the Break 2.0
Behind the Break 2.0 is a targeted research initiative focused on addressing fibre fragmentation in textiles, building directly on the work started in Phase 1.0 (2024–2025), which tested the strengths and limitations of different methods used to measure fibre loss, identifying how much results vary between labs, and exploring what drives fibre shedding across three fabric types: cotton knit, cotton woven, and polyester knit. Phase 2.0 seeks to increase confidence in data quality, consolidate and refine existing testing approaches and knowledge across selected fabric archetypes, and deepen supplier engagement to support wider data collection within the space.
