![textile scraps symbolising the textile to textile recycling industry]](https://goodonyou.eco/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/textile-scraps-symbolising-the-textile-to-textile-recycling-industry.jpg)
The industry has poured multimillion-dollar deals into textile-to-textile recycling, betting it can close the loop on fashion’s waste problem. But between overproduction, price-sensitive brands, and a collection infrastructure that barely exists, is recycling the answer—or a very expensive distraction from the real problem?
A world without textile waste?
Textile-to-textile recycling promises a world without textile waste, in theory. The idea is that instead of becoming waste, used clothes and textiles would be collected and turned back into fibres to make new clothes. In cutting waste through recycling, the system would also support far less reliance on virgin resources from crops, animals, and fossil fuels. Though it feels like a far-off utopia, the concept isn’t new.
The process of shredding old fabric and spinning it into new yarn to make new items dates to the 1800s, but the fashion industry has hardly taken the concept and run with it.
Today, only 7.6% of all fibres are made from recycled materials: mostly plastic bottles, according to Textile Exchange. Less than 1% of all global fibres are made from pre-consumer (factory floor cuttings or unsold goods) and post-consumer (items that have been worn) recycled textiles. Instead of having another useful life, clothes that aren’t reused are mostly chucked in landfill or burned. It’s a colossal waste.
Less than 1% of all global fibres are made from pre- and post-consumer recycled textiles.
Lately, there have been some encouraging signs that things might be about to change. Textile recycling companies such as Syre, Reju, Ambercycle (which all produce recycled polyester), Samsara Eco (recycled polyester and nylon), and Circ (recycled polyester and lyocell) have built or are building commercial-scale recycling plants to make textile-to-textile recycled materials more widely available, and those plants are being funded with the help of multimillion-dollar deals from the likes of H&M, Nike, Gap, Lululemon, Zara parent company Inditex, and Target.
New regulations are helping nudge things in the right direction, too. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules are designed to make brands responsible for the end-of-life management of their products by charging a fee for each one they put on the market to cover the cost of things like collection, sorting, and recycling. The fee is lower for more circular and environmentally friendly products, so brands are incentivised to include recycled fibres in their garments, and design them in a way that makes recycling easier too. EPR is in force, or coming into force, in countries and regions including the European Union (EU), California, and Kenya.
The EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation is also intended to improve the circularity of clothes and other products. Some of the rules include increasing recycled content, addressing the presence of substances that inhibit circularity, and making products easier to remanufacture and recycle.
Are brands willing to throw enough time, energy, and money at textile-to-textile recycling to ensure it survives?
Progress hasn’t been linear, however. Many solutions have stalled along the way as appetites for recycled materials beyond the pilot phase have waned. Are brands—many of whom have famously wobbled on their sustainability commitments in recent years—willing to throw enough time, energy, and money at textile-to-textile recycling to ensure it survives for long enough to help solve the problem?
Textile-to-textile trade-offs
Recycled textiles from the 1800s were called “shoddy”, a word that, in the UK, has come to mean badly made or poor quality. Made from old woollens mixed with some new fibre, shoddy was less durable than virgin wool because the shredding process shortened the fibres. Mechanically recycled fibres still face the same issues today and recyclers must work hard to find the balance between circularity and quality.
“Making yarns out of the fibres is really hard, then making the fabric is really hard, and then making garments from the fabric, making it strong enough, is also really hard. It takes a lot of development,” says Thijmen de Vries, business developer at circular textiles company Fibre to Fibre. Brands and manufacturers need to be willing to take the time to get everything just right, from the blend of recycled and virgin fibres to the way the fabric is woven or knitted. And time means money. Currently, de Vries says Fibre to Fibre’s products are comparable in price to organic cotton or recycled polyester (“We’d be expensive for Primark, but anything above that we can compete with,” he says) largely because they produce in Bangladesh (in BSCI-audited factories which checks for rights like health and safety, prohibition of child labour, and fair pay), in proximity to existing production where manufacturing costs are lower.
Brands and manufacturers need to be willing to take the time to get everything just right, from the blend of recycled and virgin fibres to the way the fabric is woven or knitted.
As their processes become more efficient, de Vries says the company aims to hit price parity with conventional (ie virgin or non-organic) materials in the next two to three years, but as of the end of 2026, Fibre to Fibre will be worn in over 68 countries, so the appetite is there even at an elevated price.
But with the likes of Shein booming and the number of luxury shoppers dropping by 50 million in recent years, de Vries knows Fibre to Fibre’s recycled products have to compete on price. He can’t count on enough customers being willing to pay a premium in the name of circularity.
Swedish textile-to-textile recycling company Renewcell discovered this the hard way. It was pegged to be a major player in the fashion industry’s journey to circularity, able to chemically recycle cotton-rich clothes and production scraps on a large scale into dried sheets that could then be turned into fabrics including viscose and lyocell. But in February 2024, the company filed for bankruptcy. Brands that had initially made promises to buy lots of the fibre—produced in Sweden and costing around 50% more than a conventional, non-recycled counterpart—didn’t follow through and Renewcell couldn’t drum up enough sales to continue.
Thanks to a buyout from an investment firm, Renewcell came back as Circulose in 2025, and it restarted commercial production as of early 2026.
By 2032, Syre hopes to be producing 3 million metric tons of recycled polyester a year across multiple plants worldwide.
So, will all the newly announced megabucks contracts help? A bit. By 2032, Syre hopes to be producing 3 million metric tons of recycled polyester a year across multiple plants worldwide. That’s a big leap but still less than 4% of the amount of polyester being produced today. By the 2030s, polyester production is projected to exceed 90 million tonnes, so that percentage will shrink. Even in the very best-case scenario with the best intentions, textile-to-textile recycling will barely be making a dent.
The elephant in the room
“No matter how good the recycling systems are, they’re not going to solve the overproduction problem,” says Gordon Renouf, CEO and co-founder of Good On You. This undeniable truth is what puts a dampener on enthusiasm for textile-to-textile recycling for some.
“Ongoing production of excess will negate any gains from dealing with existing excess,” says Ruth MacGilp, fashion campaign manager at environmental campaign organisation Action Speaks Louder. She wants brands to turn off the tap and produce less in the first place instead of continuing to pile textile waste on top of what already exists.
Ongoing production of excess will negate any gains from dealing with existing excess.
Ruth MacGilp – fashion campaign manager at Action Speaks Louder
Patrik Frisk, CEO of recycling company Reju, thinks he can encourage companies to both invest in recycling and produce less. Currently, brands are effectively gambling when they place an order—hoping they’ve matched what they make with demand—and often buy too much as a result. “That’s why we have about 20-40% of everything being sold at a discount. We made too much of it, and it didn’t arrive exactly on time [to meet peak demand]. That business model is flawed and will always overproduce,” he says.
Reju plans to build its plants across Europe and North America, where the consumer is, rather than where most manufacturers are. Frisk’s hope is that with shorter distances and time to market, brands will produce less because they know they can get more quickly if needed. The Reju recycled fibre and the domestic manufacturing will increase costs, but Frisk’s idea is that if brands are wasting less money on unnecessary production, they’ll be willing to invest more in a better system. “This is a moment in time where [brands] should actually plan ahead and say, ‘we’re creating too much waste, we need to become more circular’,” he says.
The proposition won’t work for all brands. The plummet in price and quality we’ve witnessed in recent years shows how hard some brands are willing to go in the race to the bottom. But Frisk sets out a clear case for reconsidering the business model from the ground up, getting to grips with all of the factors that feed into waste and overproduction, not merely investing in recycling innovation.
Despite calls from all corners of the industry, brands barely talk about how much they produce, let alone promise to make less. Indeed, Leyla Ertur, chief sustainability officer for H&M Group, commented in January that the brand’s strategy is not based on reducing quantities. “We would like to produce as much as we can sell,” she told Vogue Business. Swedish brand NA-KD is one of the few that transparently talks about its progress towards reducing production volumes in its annual sustainability reports. That it can be singled out demonstrates how unusual a move it is.
The imperative: rethinking design
Beyond making less, brands are also going to need to make differently. Fibre to Fibre’s de Vries estimates that, according to the weight of clothes input into its system versus the fibre output, around 60% of the textile waste the company processes can be broken down to make new products. The other parts, such as embroidery, zips, and spandex, have to enter different waste streams controlled by different organisations. Some parts will likely end up being burned.
Dutch company Around Systems is trying to change that. Founder Steve Kopp started by developing a thread that can dissolve under high pressure to make automated disassembly for recycling easier. But he soon realised that most designers aren’t even thinking about how a garment might be taken apart at the end of its life. They’re thinking about print, colour, silhouette. So, Around Systems became a multi-pronged tool, with one part designed to act as guidebook for designers, helping them to make circular decisions. A designer could, for instance, input the fabric they’re intending to use, and the platform would show what existing end-of-life options exist for it and then generate a to-do list. If that fabric was a cotton-spandex blend, it’s likely there would be no recycling options, so the designer could rethink and make a better choice with circularity in mind.
“You can’t fit a simple solution into a complex industry,” says Brigitta Danka, chief product officer at Around Systems. “We don’t think we’re a panacea. If we can help with a little slice of this complex pie, that’s what we want to do.”
Joining up the dots
Nic Gorini, founder and managing partner at venture capital firm Spin Ventures, wants to help with another slice of the pie: convincing brands to make the leap and embrace circular systems. Through innovation platform The House of Circularity, Gorini brings together investors and startups to co-develop closed-loop systems, and he has seen firsthand what it takes for big brands to adopt new systems. “Corporates are risk-averse animals. Change needs to come from a clear demonstration of tangible value creation. If we start with one little pilot innovation then we can demonstrate that there’s economic value in managing goods as assets [that can be tracked and recaptured],” he says, adding that those who adapt and adopt first will be rewarded with a competitive edge.
Much of that value creation relies upon efficient waste collection, sorting, and processing systems being put in place. That’s why, rather than announce big deals with brands, Reju has, to date, announced partnerships with companies across Europe and North America who can supply it with the post-consumer textiles it needs to actually make its product. “For us just to do the technology is never going to work, because we will be dependent on post-consumer textile waste to do our job, and the post-consumer textile waste value chain and infrastructure does not exist,” says Frisk. Reju is creating, Frisk says, the “oil pipeline of the future.” Which is to say, investing heavily in setting up an efficient, connected network that will see used clothes flow seamlessly between consumers, collectors, processors, recyclers, and manufacturers, and then back to consumers again.
Just as recyclers need brands to commit, collectors need recyclers to commit, and both need governments to commit to making circularity a requirement rather than a voluntary option.
“We need to understand what’s stopping scaling,” says Good On You’s Renouf. Alongside big brand agreements and EPR legislation, he lists the lack of large-scale collection systems as a big roadblock. And it could get bigger. After several textile collection and sorting companies shuttered in 2024, a joint letter was issued by industry associations warning of an “unprecedented crisis” due to an oversupply of used textiles and a sharp decline in demand. Just as recyclers need brands to commit, collectors need recyclers to commit, and both need governments to commit to making circularity a requirement rather than a voluntary option. Every link in the chain needs to move together and because of that, things are going to move slowly.
“Let’s be honest about this, it’s going to take a generation,” says Frisk. It’s a frustrating, frightening reality for those at the sharp end of the joint waste and climate crisis, and it would be reasonable to argue that by the time enough brands get on board it will be too late, that the industry will have created an insurmountable volume of waste.
“We’re not going to recycle our way out of the problem. It’s not even halfway to the solution. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that recycling is not worth doing,” says Renouf. It just cannot be the only action fashion takes. It needs to tackle the root cause and the roadblocks too. “To fix the problem, you’re going to need more than one arrow in your bow.”
