This story is a part of one5c’s guide to sustainable fashion. Read more about how to ditch fast fashion, fast fashion’s climate impacts, if (and how) clothing rentals help, and how to spot high-quality clothes.
Imagine a world where every shirt or pair of pants came not just with a couple extra buttons, but also the needle, thread, and instructions you’d need to properly mend and care for it. Or if a new pair of high-priced yet high-quality boots also came with a coupon for a repair at the same store where you bought them. Imagine that the companies design their wares that way, and build their businesses around keeping their garments out of the dump for as long as humanly possible—including a pipeline for reclaiming and repurposing duds once they’ve reached the end of their usable life. What a beautiful dream, right?
The idea is part of what’s termed a circular economy in fashion, and it could be a big part of shifting the industry from “fast fashion” to “slow fashion.” This cycle would focus on repairing, mending, reusing, and—when the technology catches up—recycling clothes. Trouble is, there’s a long way to go before we get there.
What would a circular economy in fashion look like?
The world we live in, alas, is far from a “circular economy.” Especially in America, consumption is driven by what’s called a “make-take-use-discard” mentality. In terms of fashion, a circular economy would look like a system in which items are made to last longer and are designed to be diverted from landfills by being recycled or repurposed into something new. Like, for example, if an old, used button-up shirt or pair of boots became unrepairable, there would be systems in place to remake them as a canvas grocery bag or wallet.
Just like all things sustainability, definitions vary as to what a circular economy entails. Circular economies are about “keeping atoms and molecules in the economy” and out of waste streams, explains Kelsea Schumacher, a scientist working for the federal agency who helped develop the Circular Economy program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce tasked with advancing tech and science standards. “The idea is to keep [products and materials] within the economy as long as we can at their highest value,” she says. That could look like keeping a pair of pants in use as long as physically possible—and when the seams finally fail, that garment could be revived as something new.
Reusing, repairing, and refurbishing are paramount in a circular economy focused on reducing waste. “We see recycling as the final step of a circular economy,” Schumacher says. “Technically, there will always be some level of waste generally across the lifestyle—manufacturing scraps, consumer waste, etc.—there will always be some level of linkage to landfills. The goal is to decrease that link.”
The biggest problem with today’s clothing industry is not that we can’t recycle clothes, it’s that there is just far too much being produced. Fast fashion trends literally bank on people buying and trashing items frequently, creating an unsustainable trend for the current way our clothes are made and worn.1
What processes are in place to recycle clothes?
According to a December 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nation’s leading environmental regulators are 5 to 10 years away from developing any kind of national textile recycling strategy.2 It’s unclear how that plan will progress.
A lack of federal oversight is only one challenge to getting clothing recycling up and running, in the U.S. at least. Unlike existing recycling setups for glass, metal, paper, and plastic, there’s little to no good centralized collection infrastructure in most states. The other—perhaps larger—issue is that most garments aren’t made to be taken apart and reused; mixed types of fibers or add-ons like buttons and zippers make tearing down garments complex.3
Elsewhere in the world, ideas that promote reuse and recycling of goods like clothes are on the books. The “Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law” in France is often cited as one of the most progressive; it, for example, bans the “destruction of unsold non-food products,” which includes clothing items. (E.U. estimates say about 264,000-594,000 metric tons of unwanted textiles alone are destroyed every year.4) That effort expands on laws enacted by the European Union’s “Circular Economy Package” and a 2019 directive to curb plastic pollution—all of which expand circular economy concepts to more than two dozen countries.
Is there any ‘fashionable’ circularity right now?
Examples of circularity in fashion do exist, but they can be hard to come by. Smartwool’s “Second Cut Project” with Material Return helps unwanted pairs of clean socks live more lives, and Patagonia’s Worn Wear program which incentivizes keeping old gear in circulation and provides affordable secondhand pieces to shoppers. Still, such efforts are exceptions, not rules.
According to a 2018 review study, less than 1% of the material used to produce clothing was ultimately made into new clothing.5 The researchers noted that reuse trumps recycling, but either option would reduce environmental impact compared to incineration and landfilling.
In an effort to fill in this wide gap, U.K.-based charity The Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2019 set off to redesign jeans to fit a more circular economy. Its redesigns include tweaks that ensure the jeans will last longer and be more easily remade once they’re worn out. Big retailers like Primark, one of the 100 companies partnering with the foundation on the project, acknowledge that such efforts, though, do come at a premium.
What about clothes made from recycled materials? Does that count?
It’s important to not confuse recyclable clothing—that is duds designed to have a second life—with clothes that are made from recycled materials. When it comes to the latter, it’s worth taking the time to ask what that really means. There’s a difference between recycled clothing and “downcycling,” which is when other products like PET-based water bottles are broken down and spun into textiles. Such practices aren’t truly part of a circular economy, because they’re using resources to create lower-quality items that will ultimately be landfilled or incinerated—and perpetuating a fossil-fuel driven plastics packaging industry.
A more sustainable alternative would be what’s called “fiber-to-fiber” recycling. This makes sure old discarded clothes are fed back into the fashion industry as new products, as suggested by a European Union task force policy paper.
“It is really difficult with recycled content claims,” says Amanda Forster, a materials research engineer who works with Schumacher at NIST. “There are some industry standards out there, but it can be challenging for the consumer to parse that out.” She and Schumacher have actually been in the process of developing some standards at NIST that could allow scientists and regulators to “better validate and understand the transparency of those types of claims.”
So, can I recycle my old clothes?
Whether or not you’re able to give your clothes a second life really depends on how you define their next phase. Maybe consider shifting to the idea of “reuse” instead of recycling. The technology and innovation needed to make clothes recycling truly work has not happened yet, and even if there were more wide-scale recycling programs for clothes, recycling still doesn’t solve the problem of too many items being made to begin with, ecotoxicologist Susanne Brander says. “Recycling polyester is just going to create a market for more polyester,” she says. “That’s probably not what we want to do, right?”
The scientists at NIST see recycling as the last leg of a product’s journey in a circular economy. One of the biggest challenges, they say, is finding buyers for that recycled material, when buying new products often comes at a much lower cost.
How about take-back bags?
There are emerging alternatives to dumping used clothes at the thrift store in the form of take-back programs. Pact’s Give Back Box program, for example, aims to reuse packaging and connect used clothing with nonprofits. Other companies like Trashie and Retold Recycling offer mail-based bag services that allow people to recirculate unwanted textiles from home.
Trashie includes details about where clothes go based on need, like sending “warm coats to Eastern Europe during winter,” instead of just dumping off loads of unwanted goods. Trashie admits some items are downcycled into other items like carpet padding, but also notes its sorting system aims to do the “fiber-to-fiber” recycling that many experts recommend. Even so, it’s hard to meet the fiber count threshold needed for these processes, given how many mixed materials wind up in clothes.
Retold claims it has diverted over 150 tons of textiles since its founding in 2020, but as we all know, nothing is perfect. The bags used by Retold to collect clothes, textiles, and sewing scraps are labeled as “compostable & biodegradable,” which could be considered greenwashing since these types of plastic don’t really break down naturally like it sounds. The company also isn’t super transparent about what recycling companies or second-hand shops it works with.
Big-name brands like Crocs and H&M have also tried tack-back schemes that have been found lacking. Whether the company is big or small, it’s always worth a little homework to look for some receipts to back up those sustainability or circular economy claims.
What you can do instead
While clothes recycling still figures out its kinks, some other sustainable options people have are to thrift, resell, or upcycle their clothing on their own. Just keep in mind that thrifting and reselling can still perpetuate oversupply issues, because they can create a permission structure to keep shopping.6
Aside from advocating for changes to laws and regulations that could hold producers accountable, there is growing hope in the realm of wardrobe repairs and recycling. Finding specific stores or sites (think places like The Real Real for your brand name goodies that are still in decent shape, and local thrift shops like for unique or vintage pieces that still have some life in them) can also make it more likely your old garb really will find a new home. “It’s important to think about reuse and resale as part of that slow fashion journey, even if they’re more expensive,” says NIST’s Forster. “That’s a piece of it, unfortunately.”
- The reDesign Canvas: Fashion Design as a Tool for Sustainability, Journal of Cleaner Production, May 2018 ↩︎
- Textile Waste: Federal Entities Should Collaborate on Reduction and Recycling Efforts, United States Government Accountability Office, Dec 2024 ↩︎
- Textile Recycling and Recovery: An Eco-friendly Perspective on Textile and Garment Industries Challenges, Textile Research Journal, May 2024 ↩︎
- The Destruction of Returned and Unsold Textiles in Europe’s Circular Economy, European Environment Agency, May 2024 ↩︎
- Environmental Impact of Textile Reuse and Recycling – A Review, Journal of Cleaner Production, May 2018 ↩︎
- Recycling Technologies for Enabling Sustainability Transitions of the Fashion Industry: Status Quo and Avenues for Increasing Post-Consumer Waste Recycling, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 2022 ↩︎