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.

The European Green Deal and the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan highlight textiles as one of the particularly important material streams with regard to circularity potential and environmental footprint.

In a world first for the fashion industry, twelve pioneering players came together to break new ground by demonstrating a circular model for commercial garment production.

The T-REX Project brings together 13 major players from across the entire value chain to create a harmonised EU blueprint and business opportunities for closed loop sorting, and recycling of household textile waste. Transforming end-of-use textiles, from waste, into a desired feedstock, and a commodity for new business models that can be adopted at scale.

The Tracing Textile Waste Project by Fashion for Good and Textile Exchange focuses on improving transparency and traceability of textile waste in the reverse supply chain.

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.

World of Waste is an online tool dedicated to uniting industry-wide efforts to develop and disseminate data on textile waste. The platform consolidates data from individual studies by partnering with ecosystem players.

This project was designed to organise and optimise India’s textile waste supply chain. By evaluating various waste streams for collection, sorting, and pre-processing, the initiative aimed to enhance circularity in textiles. It sought to improve collection and sorting systems, foster recycling infrastructure, and introduce innovative solutions to generate new revenue streams and next-generation materials from textile waste-reducing reliance on virgin resources and minimising landfill and incineration.

India generates around 3,944k tonnes of post-consumer textile waste annually, with 48% viable for recycling feedstock, though inadequate sorting and recycling systems prevent full utilisation. This project involved two primary pilots that tested sorting innovations: Matoha’s FabriTell desktop scanner for semi-automated sorting and PICVISA’s ECOSORT for fully automated sorting. The pilots aimed to assess these technologies’ ability to categorise waste by fibre and colour efficiently, ultimately facilitating quality feedstock production for recycling. Initial findings suggest India could effectively harness a closed-loop textile recycling system, with cotton and polyester blends as dominant waste types.

The Sorting for Circularity India Pre-Consumer Pilot aimed to organise the Indian textile waste market by establishing a circular economy that maximises value recovery from textile waste. This pilot addressed pre-consumer waste (factory floor cutting waste) and aimed to demonstrate a 360° closed-loop system, where factory waste is segregated, digitally traced, and then processed by recyclers to produce new fibres, which are returned to the production chain. The initiative sought to enhance transparency, traceability, and efficiency in India’s textile waste management system.

The project aimed to assess the potential for fibre-to-fibre recycling in the United States. The project evaluated consumer behaviour around textile disposal and analysed post-consumer textile waste to determine its suitability for recycling. The goal was to promote circularity by improving textile collection systems and supporting the development of recycling infrastructures and technologies.

The Sorting for Circularity Europe project was launched in early 2021 and initiated by Fashion for Good together with Circle Economy. The project was made possible by catalytic funding from Laudes Foundation and brand partners, adidas, BESTSELLER, Inditex and Zalando, with H&M Group as key project partners. The project addressed the need for data on textile waste in the market, identifying waste types and recycling opportunities.

Launched in 2021, the Sorting for Circularity Framework aims to bridge the gap between the textile sorting and recycling industries by improving data collection on textile waste volumes and characteristics (such as composition, quality and colour). This initiative was designed to address the critical lack of information and implementation needed to enhance textile waste management and recycling processes using sorting and traceability.

The London Polybag Collection Scheme Pilot aimed to address the low recycling rates of polybags used in the fashion industry by trialling a scalable recycling infrastructure for collecting and processing polybag waste into new materials.