Why fashion’s ‘recycling’ is not really saving the planet

In H&M’s flagship Paris store it is hard to find clothes that don’t claim to be made from “recycled materials”.

Last year, 79% of the polyester in its collections came from recycled materials, and next year it wants it all to be recycled.

The Swedish fast fashion giant said recycled material allows the “industry to reduce its dependence on virgin polyester made from fossil fuels”.

The problem is that “93% of all recycled textiles today comes from plastic bottles, not from old clothes”, said Urska Trunk of campaign group Changing Markets. In other words, fossil fuels.

And while a plastic bottle can be recycled five or six times, a T-shirt in recycled polyester “can never be recycled again”, said Trunk.

Almost all recycled polyester is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) from plastic bottles, according to the non-profit Textile Exchange.

In Europe, most textile waste is either dumped or burned. Only 22% is recycled or reused – and most of that is turned into insulation, mattress stuffing or cleaning cloths. “Less than one percent of fabric used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing,” the European Commission said.

Recycling textiles is “much more complex than recycling other materials, such as glass or paper”, according to Lenzing, an Austrian manufacturer famous for its wood-based fibres.

For a start, clothes made from more than two fibres are for now regarded as unrecyclable. Those clothes that can be recycled must be sorted by colour, and then have zips, buttons, studs and other material removed.

It is often costly and labour intensive, say experts, though pilot projects are beginning to appear in Europe, said Greenpeace’s Lisa Panhuber. However, the technology “in its infancy”, said Trunk. –