From waste to wealth: Europe’s textile opportunity

Europe is a global leader in recycling, yet only a small portion of its post-consumer textile waste is reused or transformed into valuable materials. In 2025, merely 1.5 million tons out of 13.3 million tons of post-consumer textile waste was collected and sorted. Textile waste has skyrocketed due to fast fashion, with each European consumer purchasing approximately 95 items annually, a 12% increase since 2019.

Discarded textiles in the EU have surged, weighing 25 kg per citizen in 2025—a figure that, without proper management, becomes a recurring financial burden for households and municipalities.

The cheap and low-quality nature of fast fashion has led to disposable fashion habits, exacerbating the waste crisis. Producers lack incentives to change their practices. Recent advancements in textile-to-textile recycling hold the potential to convert synthetic textile waste into a reliable feedstock for a circular European textile industry.

Capturing and reusing this material would conserve resources, mitigate waste, and bolster the EU's industrial foundation and economic independence. Implementing the forthcoming Circular Economy Act is crucial for this transformation, recognizing textiles as a vital resource and crafting a cohesive framework across the bloc that promotes collection, sorting, reuse, and high-quality recycling on a grand scale.

Turning Europe's fashion industry from a linear to a circular model is a multifaceted and evolving endeavor. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation envisions a circular economy for fashion where clothing, footwear, and accessories are utilized extensively, recycled, and crafted from recycled or renewable sources. Presently, European post-consumer textile waste often undergoes downcycling, ends up in landfills, or is incinerated due to a lack of financial incentives and a clear regulatory pathway.

Consequently, the EU discards valuable materials while exporting environmental impacts and industrial value elsewhere.

Currently, it is more cost-effective for producers to utilize virgin materials than recycled ones. However, this approach should not be the norm. The demand for secondhand clothing has not grown as swiftly as textile waste, and the received waste is of poorer quality. Sorting centers, typically run by non-profits, are overwhelmed as they handle more waste with diminishing value extraction potential.

In the Netherlands, the government recently granted Reju, a textile-to-textile regeneration company, a €135 million grant to construct and operate its inaugural industrial-scale textile Regeneration Hub in Chemelot. Reju specializes in converting European post-consumer polyester textile waste into premium recycled polyester. Upon completion, the hub is anticipated to process around 64,000 tons of textile waste, equivalent to 300 million items, annually, producing nearly 40,000 tons of recycled polyester material. Textile sorting is typically performed manually at sorting centers operated by non-profits.

Patrik Frisk, CEO of Reju, highlights the challenges faced by sorting centers, noting that rising waste volumes and diminished quality render them unable to extract sufficient value. "As the business matures over the years, and regulations come into force to bolster the upstream system required for scaling up, only then will we achieve a self-sufficient economy.

The regulatory framework must be coordinated, or the Extended Producer Responsibility infrastructure will not attract external capital," Frisk emphasizes. "Supporting locally produced, circular textiles will not only aid the EU in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals but will also bolster regional manufacturing during a challenging economic period.

The clock is ticking: each EU member state must establish its textile Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme by April 16, 2028, and the upcoming Circular Economy Act is anticipated by year-end. We must construct infrastructure and alter our practices."