Sense of urgency is increasing for green jobs

Clothing brands are now coming to the recycling industry to seek advice on gaining access to recycled yarn, the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) has heard.

A meeting of the Textiles Division in Barcelona was told by Maud Hardy, general manager of French producer responsibility organisation Refashion: “Many brands are coming to us and asking how they can get access to recycled yarn,.

Alan Wheeler, chief executive, Textile Recycling Association, said retailers were now keen to know where to source recycled products, which marked “a definite shift from where we were just a few years ago”.

Erik Koep, chief executive of Worn Again Technologies, said his business, which develops polymer recycling processes for non-reusable textiles, aimed to build an average of two or more plants a year to meet demand.

Wheeler had said that investment from the textiles industry had been limited to date, but Koep said the required technology had not previously been available to capitalise on demand for sustainability. However, this was now starting to come on line and Koep said investment had reached an “inflection point”.

Wheeler called for “ambitious” targets from the fashion industry regarding its recycled content, while the division’s president Martin Böschen stressed the need for “more automation in the sorting process that would deliver an accurate assessment of material composition”.

He said the proposed revision of the EU’s Waste Shipment Regulation could seriously affect exports of unsorted clothing, and so more sorting capacity would be required within Europe.

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