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Textile recycling

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Textiles comprise clothes, towels, bedding, curtains, tablecloths etc. They're made of woven fabric - consisting of :

• plant materials (especially cotton)
• animal hair (especially wool)
• man-made materials (eg acrylic, rayon, nylon, elastine).

Textile recycling is a sizeable industry, employing thousands of people in the UK.

Textiles - sources and routes

Most of the textiles entering the second-hand market come from consumers. People throw out textiles because :

• they want a change
• the items have gone out of fashion
• the items no longer fit the person
• the owner has died
• they've changed their lifestyle or status - eg maternity clothes, retirement
• the items have become damaged or worn.

Consumers dispose of the items by :

• selling them - to friends or nearly-new shops, or by using small ads, Ebay etc
• giving them away
• binning them (so they go to landfill or incineration).

CharityBags is concerned with the second of these - the textiles which are given away. These enter the second-hand market via :

1. charity shops - see section below
2. re-use/recycling centres - eg at supermarkets and local council sites.
   The textiles and/or the profits go to :
   • charities or
   • commerce or
   • a partnership between the two sectors.
3. house-to-house collections (charitable and commercial).

See the page on Choosing the best way to donate your clothes for details.

Now let's look at 1, 2 and 3 above in more detail. We'll deal with 2 and 3 first, then deal with 1 (charity shops).

Textiles given to 2 above (=re-use/recycling centres) and 3 above (=house-to-house collections) go to :

• charity shops, or
• the commercial second-hand market.

Unfortunately, with 2:recycling centres and 3:house-to-house collections, the arrangements are often unclear :

• Do the items go to charity shops, or are they given to the needy, or are they sold in the commercial second-hand market?
• What money (if any) goes to charity?

 
 

Below:  Clothing bank containers (reputable charities)
 

Charity shops

Sources - You can see from the text above that the textiles going to charity shops come from three sources :

1. items delivered to the shops by the public (1 above)
2. items donated at certain re-use/recycling centres - and then taken to charity shops
3. items donated to certain house-to-house collections - and then taken to charity shops.

Sorting and rejects - The items arriving at charity shops vary in quality and saleability. Staff pick over the goods, retaining the better items for sale in the shops, and rejecting the rest. The rejects are sold to the second-hand market (or even scrapped if they're in very poor condition).

Reasons for rejection include :

• contaminated - dirt (eg grease), stains (eg ink) or marks (eg paint)
• damaged - eg faded, cut, torn, frayed, moth-eaten, missing buttons, faulty zips, pilling
• worn-out
• too old
• incomplete - eg one of a pair missing
• unfashionable - eg colour, pattern, style or material (such as nylon or PVC).

Textile recycling companies

Sorting - The items received are picked over, and sorted into categories :

• Better items are sold intact, usually for export. Typically they go to poorer areas such as Eastern Europe (eg Lithuania, Ukraine and Romania) and Africa.
• Other items are too inferior to be re-used, so they're sold as rags - eg for cleaning, filling.
• Clean fabric can be shredded and converted into recycled fibre, known as 'shoddy'. This can be spun and used again for weaving.
• The worst items are scrapped (sent to landfill or incinerated).

Sorting of textiles is a skilled and labour-intensive task.

The growth in imports of cheap new clothing from the Far East (eg China) has led to problems with recycling. Many of the goods deteriorate in use more quickly than 'traditional' clothing. This means there's a higher proportion of items which are unfit for re-use (for example due to stitching coming apart).

Price of textiles

£ The price fetched by second-hand textiles fluctuates (in a similar way to other commodities such as oil and wheat). As at September 2008, virgin clothes (see definition below) were fetching £600-800 per tonne. This was three times the price of two or three years before.

This rise has caused an increase in the number of commercial collectors in the UK (including misleading and bogus 'charitable' collectors). It's also led to an increase in the theft of bags left out for house-to-house collections.

'Virgin clothes' means they're as-donated, unsorted. However, once they've been picked over by charity shops (and the best items removed), the remaining items fetch a lower price.

Charities - When the second-hand value of textiles rises, the effect on charities is mixed :

• Charity shops earn more per tonne when they pass rejects on to recycling companies.
• With collections, where a charity gets a royalty per tonne (or a fixed amount per month), the effect on the charity depends on the arrangement with the commercial partner (the collector) :
  • In some cases the charity gets more money to reflect the increased value.
  • Unfortunately, in other cases the charity still gets the same income - and the commercial partner keeps all the extra revenue.
• There's an increase in the proportion of collection bags stolen, thus reducing revenue.

The Textile Recycling Association (TRA)

Website:  www.textile-recycling.org.uk

Based in Maidstone (Kent), it's the trade association in the UK for textile recycling companies. Members include:  L M Barry & Co, I & G Cohen Ltd, Nathan's Wastesavers Ltd and Terimpex Ltd.

Some larger charities (with charity shops) are members of the Association, including Oxfam and Scope.

Related pages

• Re-use and recycling
• Charity shops
• Choosing the best way to donate your clothes
• Clothing

 

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