BARCELONA/LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) – In a warehouse on the outskirts of Barcelona, women stand in front of conveyor belts, manually sorting T-shirts, jeans and dresses from vast bales of used clothing. This is a small step towards tackling Europe’s mounting problems. Abandoned fashion.
The sorting center, run by clothing reuse and recycling charity Moda Re, plans to double its capacity to 40,000 tonnes a year within a year.
“This is just the beginning,” said Albert Alberich, director of Moda Re, part of the Spanish charity Caritas and operator of Spain’s largest used clothing chain.
“We are increasingly using used clothing from Europe as raw material for fashion companies.”
Funded in part by Zara owner Inditex (ITX.MC), Moda Re will expand its locations in Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia, increasing its clothing sorting, processing and recycling capabilities. These are some of the first signs of an expansion plan. A barrage of new European Union proposals to rein in the fashion industry.
In Spain, rivals such as H&M, Mango and Inditex are responding to EU law requiring member states to separate textiles from other waste from January 2025, and a non-profit organization to manage clothing waste was established.
Despite these efforts, less than a quarter of Europe’s 5.2 million tonnes of clothing waste is recycled, with millions of tonnes ending up in landfill each year. The European Commission announced this in July.
A 2021 EU report says that although precise data on the growth of clothing waste is lacking, collection for recycling and reuse has gradually increased in several European countries since around 2010.
Fast fashion, the production and sale of short-lived and cheap clothing, is “highly unsustainable”, the European Commission said in July. The textile industry is a major cause of climate change and environmental destruction, the report said.
Inditex announced in March that it put 10% more clothing on the global market last year than in 2021, but as part of its sustainability goals announced in July, it aims to use 40% more recycled fibers in its clothing by 2030. We aim to use %.
“The main problem we face is overconsumption,” said the Frankfurt-based asset manager, who owns shares in Adidas (ADSGn.DE), Hugo Boss (BOSSn.DE), Inditex and H&M. said Dejana Lind, an ESG analyst at the firm Union Investments. (HMb.ST).
Lind said he has been talking with Adidas, Hugo Boss and Inditex about the need for these companies to increase their use of recycled fibers, and the need for the apparel industry as a whole to increase textile recycling.
“Overproduction and overconsumption are generally industry-wide issues,” Hugo Boss said in a statement to Reuters, adding that it was leveraging data analytics to better align production with demand. .
In a report last year, consultancy McKinsey estimated that creating the scale of textile waste treatment and recycling the EU aims for would require an investment of between €6 billion and €7 billion by 2030. Reuters could not reveal how much investment is currently being made in the industry.
Lind said companies have put in place some first steps, but “more work is needed.”
Inditex announced that it will invest €3.5 million over three years in Moda Re to install recycling containers in all of its stores in Spain. It did not respond to a request for comment on the suggestion that further action should be taken.
H&M said in a statement to Reuters that it recognized it was “part of the problem.”
“We need to change the way fashion is produced and consumed. This is an undeniable truth,” H&M said.
Obstacle
Despite efforts such as the EU crackdown, industry sustainability efforts and the expansion of Moda Re, significant obstacles remain to significantly reducing clothing waste.
McKinsey said in a report that reaching the industry goal of recycling 2.5 million tonnes of textile waste by 2030 will require building hundreds of similar factories, as well as investment in technology and market intervention. He said it would be necessary.
Fourteen European textile recycling companies are planning to increase production capacity, according to Fashion for Good, a start-up investment firm in recycled textiles that surveyed 57 recyclers in a September 2022 report.
The EU has not set specific targets for the recycled content of clothing, but by 2030 all textile products sold in the region must be made from recycled fibres, made to be durable, repairable and durable. The goal is to make it recyclable.
To create the capacity to achieve this goal, ReHubs Europe, an association set up by the clothing lobby group EURATEX, is introducing “fiber-to-fiber” recycling, the process of turning used clothing into yarn to create new textiles. We are promoting investment in
EURATEX did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions about its level of investment in the technology.
Less than 1% of clothing is currently recycled this way, and the process is still being developed. Challenges include separating different types of fibers into raw materials suitable for recycling.
These technologies are still in their infancy, and the higher cost of recycled fabrics compared to new fabrics remains a barrier to widespread adoption.
african wash
At the Barcelona factory, the clothes arrive from more than 7,000 donation bins located in supermarkets, Zara and Mango stores. An infrared machine donated by Inditex identifies the fiber composition of clothing and speeds up sorting, which is largely done by hand.
Currently, approximately 40% of the clothing Moda Re receives is sent to other facilities for recycling. Only one-fifth of this is recycled fiber-to-textile, and Moda Re expects that proportion to increase to 70% over the next three to four years.
For now, most of the recycling goes toward low-grade products like dish towels.
Almost half of the clothing donated to Moda Re is shipped for resale in African countries such as Cameroon, Ghana, and Senegal. Moda Re says exported clothing can be reused.
according to united nations trade data, the EU exported 1.4 million tonnes of used textiles in 2022, more than double the amount in 2000. Not all of that clothing is reused, and exporting used clothing from Europe to Africa can potentially contaminate clothing that cannot be resold. The EU said it would eventually become a garbage dump.
The European Commission’s proposed regulation aims to crack down on unscrupulous companies exporting damaged goods for dumping, requiring countries to demonstrate their ability to sustainably manage the items.
Moda Re said it aims to reduce the amount of clothing it sends to Africa.
Currently, only 8% of donations are resold at Moda Re’s thrift stores, and this method is widely seen as a more efficient way to reuse old clothing. A similar amount ends up in European landfills.
The company told Reuters it aims to expand its number of second-hand goods stores in Spain from more than 100 to 300 over the next three years, doubling resale value.
Despite the challenges, Moda Re employees said they feel positive about their work.
“We collect discarded clothes and make new ones,” said Aissatou Boukum, a young Senegalese worker, as she fed the clothes into a machine that sliced them into ribbons for recycling. “For me, that’s a good thing.”
corporate responsibility
Similar to the initiative by Inditex, PUMA (PUMG.DE) has partnered with clothing collection and sorting companies I:CO from Germany, Texaid from Switzerland and Vestolidale from Italy.
Adidas (ADSGn.DE), Bestseller and H&M (HMb.ST) have invested in Infinited Fiber Company, a Finnish start-up that manufactures fibers from textile waste, cardboard and paper.
The committee’s legislative push includes rules that would make retailers pay for the cost of collecting used clothing for reuse or recycling.
Under the proposed rules, retailers would pay a fee of about 12 euro cents for each item of clothing sold within the bloc, with higher fees for clothing that is more difficult to recycle, the European Commission said. Estimates were made in July.
As in Spain, textile waste associations will be established in each country. In France, this system has already been in place since 2008 under an organization called Refashon.
Reuters asked 10 major fashion companies, including Adidas, H&M and Primark, how fees impact their profitability. No one provided a quote. All said they wanted fees to be the same across the EU.
“This is a tsunami of legislation,” said Mauro Scalia, director of sustainable business at Euratex.
Reporting by Corina Pons in Madrid and Helen Reid in London. Additional reporting from Horaci García and Nacho Doce in Barcelona.Editing: Frank Jack Daniel
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