Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 1464: Textiles Waste as Resources for Relevant Cross-Sectoral Applications, Opening the Cycle to Reach Circular Economy—A Review

Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18031464

Authors:
Matteo Bertelli
Debora Giorgi
Claudia Morea
Luca Incrocci

In recent decades, the global fashion and textile market has been facing an unprecedented sector-wide crisis. The growing demand for clothing, combined with continuously decreasing prices and driven by the constant availability of new quantities and styles, has allowed fast fashion and super-fast fashion business models to flood the market with low-quality, short-lived, and high environmental impact products. Starting from 1 January 2025, the separate collection of textile waste came into force in the European Union. However, under current conditions, this regulatory change has generated an imbalance between collection capacity and the availability of effective sorting and recycling channels. Furthermore, due to the low market demand for recycled fibers, warehouses and landfills are increasingly filling with post-consumer textile waste, materials that could potentially serve as secondary raw materials but currently remain unsold. Moreover, the fast fashion business model promotes the use of short fibers and complex fiber blends that are resource-intensive and generate large volumes of low-quality waste. This material profile further limits reuse and recycling options, exacerbating inefficiencies within existing waste management systems. This review aims to identify and discuss available opportunities to address textile waste containing low-quality fibers through the examination of scientific literature, technical publications, and market-ready products that utilize regenerated textile materials. The results highlight open-loop applications and processes, such as those in the automotive, building, and design sectors, thereby opening to new end-of-life scenarios for waste textiles.

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Matteo Bertelli www.mdpi.com