Fast fashion often ends up trashed. New recycling techniques could help.

The fast fashion industry contributes to massive textile waste, with 85% ending up in landfills. Recycling is challenging due to blended fabrics and a lack of centralised collection infrastructure. Efforts to improve recycling include near-infrared spectroscopy and electrostatic separation to sort and recycle textiles.

Each year, as tens of billions of garments are made, countless unwanted clothes end up discarded – often destined for landfills or incineration. The fast fashion industry often gets blamed for encouraging people to buy more than they need and for making clothes that don’t last long. Another problem with all those seasonal must-haves is that recycling textiles can be difficult – especially when so much clothing is made from a combination of fibres.



A key challenge, experts say, is figuring out how to sort and separate materials in a way that makes them usable in new clothing..