02 - Textile Recycling: What it Takes and How to Create Circular Textiles

Is textile recycling the missing link for creating circular fashion? This TOMRA Talks Circular podcast explores what it takes to establish systems that collect and sort textiles for reuse and fiber-to-fiber recycling. Our guest, Vibeke Kroh,  Head of TOMRA Textiles, shares her insights and key beliefs to enable textile circularity. From textile policy to reuse and technology-driven solutions, we discuss what it will take for the textile industry to transform from a linear to a circular economy. Listen in to find out more! 

Listen to the episode below, or use your favourite platform (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts)

Show Notes

• Introduction to the textiles industry [00:00]
• Current state of the textiles industry [02:06]
• Obstacles to circular textile production [04:42]
• Transitioning to circular textile production [06:05]
• Importance of policies and legislation [10:43]
• Automated sorting of textiles [15:21]
• TOMRA's role in creating circular value chains [19:37]
• The future of the textiles industry

Transcript

Mithu Mohren (00:00)
welcome to another episode of TOMRA Talks Circular. I'm your host, Mithu Mohren

The textile industry is valued at 270 billion euro, making it hugely important in the global economy. Over the past two decades, textile production has doubled, largely driven by consumers' love of fast fashion and linear production methods. This increase has left the world drowning in textile waste, 92 million tons of it every year, to be exact. Although negative headlines and statistics are everywhere,

There is hope, and more importantly, solutions for a more circular future. One of the stakeholders shifting the focus toward solution is TOMRA. Our recently published white paper not only looks at the current state of the textiles industry, but also spotlights the strategies and technologies needed for transitioning towards a circular value chain.

Guiding us through the conversation today is Vibeke Krohn, head of TOMRA Textiles and former associate partner at McKinsey. Vibeke's experience in the field offers insights into ongoing investments and potential innovations within the textiles circularity. Vibeke, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

Vibeke (01:21)
Thank you. Pleasure being here.

Mithu Mohren (01:25)
Vibeke, why textiles?

Vibeke (01:29)
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, after 20 years of building business in tech and telco and fintech, fast fashion and textile is certainly something new, but ever so important and being part of solving a global textile waste problem is just incredibly motivating. And I find textiles is such a tangible part of our lives. It keeps us warm, it communicates, it's how we express our identity, it's how we very often

show kinship or connection. So textile is truly an integral part of being human.

Mithu Mohren (02:06)
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more because I know I stand in front of my closet every morning and think what am I going to wear? So it is definitely part of my daily routine and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there. So before we dive into TOMRA's recently published white paper that I mentioned before, could you give us a brief interview of what the textiles industry looks like today in terms of circularity?

Vibeke (02:30)
Certainly, and it is a little bit of a bleak picture. We live in a world where we consumers consume more than our planet can bear. And textiles is probably one of the least industries out there. The textile industry releases more than one gigaton of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, and a total of around 3% of the world's total emissions.

that makes textiles really one of the real baddies out there, one of the top five CO2 emitters in the world. And it's up there with shipping and aviation and production of steels. it's mind boggling. But at the same time also, we continue our consumption and fast fashion prevails. And with increasing

number of annual collections and the sources of material these clothes are made from is predominantly virgin. So only one percent of textiles today are produced of recycled material. It's meaning that mostly everything is produced through virgin feedstock.

predominantly cotton or fossil fuel-based polyesters.

And I think we've all seen the disturbing images of the Atacama Desert, where you have mountains of clothes or just clothes washing up in piles on the beaches of Ghana. We truly need a textile revolution here. But I also bring it to our attention on the positive is that we do see more and more consumers understanding that overconsumption of textile is impossible. And this whole take, make.

waste attitude cannot continue. And we do see consumers that are conscious, they're shifting towards behavior, buying pre-loved, repurposing, reselling clothes that are no longer in use. So I really do see an industry at a crossroad at this point, also with increased scrutiny from media, regulator and ourselves, the consumers.

Mithu Mohren (04:42)
clear that there are some positive trends that are coming, but it's also clear that there are some big roadblocks in creating this new circular value chain. What are the biggest obstacles?

Vibeke (04:55)
I think I'm sure there are many. One that I pondered quite a bit about is the textile industry today is optimized for cost, cost and efficiency, and it's created around linearity. If we remember back, I mean, the first industrial revolution that happens in the 17, 18th and 90s, textile was really, or textile production was really shifted from

hand-made production to factory-based mechanical production that did increase efficiently and quality and quantity of cotton and wool textiles.

And the reason I argue that we need a new textile revolution is that I think we need to start looking at the real cost of the industry. We have to consider the real cost of the climate footprint and of how we consume and what are the consequences of our consumption on the planet.

Mithu Mohren (05:55)
So, Vibeke, what does it take? How do we make that shift from linear to a circular textile production?

Vibeke (06:05)
Yes, exactly. What does it take? But first, perhaps, what is textile circularity? Textile circularity.

means that textiles already produced are collected, sorted, and recycled back fiber to fiber. It means that the fibers in itself, cotton polyesters and other fibers, are reused as fiber and not downcycled into rags or incineration or other lower quality material. So the goal is really closing the loop and minimizing the environmental impact and reducing our overall reliance on

on new material.

Mithu Mohren (06:47)
can I ask you a quick question, Vibeke So when we say we're not down cycling into rags or insulation, why is that so bad?

Vibeke (06:49)
Of course.

Yeah, perhaps I'm opening up a can of worms here. I think some would argue that, isn't it great that we recycle any material and it's reused? I say, yeah, that's a starting point. That sounds good. The problem though is if we make a sweater, we want to make a polyester sweater and we use recycled bottles.

to do that, we take the recycled bottles out of their stream and their flow and ecosystem. And if bottles can stay bottles and then meet the targets of recycled materials when producing new bottles, that's same quality and same quantity needed. And instead of moving it into bottles becoming fibers.

Because if you use a bottle to become fiber, you cannot bring it back to become a bottle. So it kind of takes away from one stream and it will create scarcity in one stream and ecosystem that again put pressure on existing extraction or extraction then of new raw material. So and when we speak about recycling, we are hoping to close the loop.

So that we speak about and our targets and we've set out in Intramural Textiles to really drive textile circularity truly fiber to fiber in a closed loop.

Mithu Mohren (08:28)
Okay, so just let me understand this. By not taking PET material, which is quite valuable from drink bottles and allowing those to go back into the drink bottles, we're closing that loop or encouraging closing that loop and by keeping fiber to fiber as you call it in that circularity loop. And it's really a loop because I think when it goes into rags or installation, we lose that material. We cannot recycle it, keeping it in a loop. So we're also preserving that loop.

So there are two loops basically that we are keeping circular by moving into this textile field. So how do we make that happen?

Vibeke (09:04)
Yes, how do we make that happen? No, it certainly, and what does it take? So we just launched a white paper that you mentioned initially, we've called it transforming textile, which really tries to address the question of what does it really take? And I think the first is that we need regulation. We need supportive regulation and incentives. We need...

stakeholders coming together to finding ways to collect, sort and recycle textiles. So we need value chain collaborations. We need technology to scale for sorting and recycling. And we need capital behind that. And finally, we need a strong digital core, because one of the problems in addition to the volumes of actual textile waste is that we know very little about it. We have very little

transparency and traceability. And that's also why we kind of lose track of a waste and that it eventually, you know, it's thrown in the bin at my house or I I donated it to a textile collector and it sold again. And then eventually it's sold again and it ended up in, you know, somewhere on the beach in the global South. And that has to do with that we're losing track of.

of the data. So a strong digital core is also part of the solution here.

Mithu Mohren (10:27)
Okay, so this is a good time to really dive into the contents of the white paper that you've already said. It's called Transforming Textiles. And it talks about some of the challenges and identifies the four key beliefs that you've just mentioned.

Okay, though we can't cover everything here, I would like to go a little bit more in depth and briefly chat through each of them, starting with the first key belief, centered around policies and legislation. Why is legislation so important?

Vibeke (11:01)
We truly believe that a supportive regulatory framework, strong policy and strong incentives will guide and motivate the shift towards textile circularity. And also thinking about the current value chain, it is broken. We need policy and regulation to motivate players to invest in a circular value chain and we need the push and the real driver to

recycle that we've seen work for other materials. If we look to, you know, recycling of plastics or even electronics, where we have had good strong help from guiding regulation. One piece of regulation that we're really hoping to see come through in EU and it's really at the EU tables at this point is it's a strong extended producer responsibility for textiles. We've seen that have very positive effect for plastics.

Mithu Mohren (11:31)
Yeah.

Vibeke (11:55)
and for other goods and we hope and will welcome a strong extended producer responsibility for textiles.

Mithu Mohren (12:03)
What about the US?

Vibeke (12:05)
Certainly, you know what, very often we talk about policy and legislations in European setting, but we've spent quite a lot of time looking into both the European and the US markets. And as much as that, we don't necessarily expect strong movements in the US, we do see positive movements in the US in strong array or establishing a strong regulatory framework. We see...

some states banning exports. We see California looking at an extended producer responsibility bill. We see waste disposal bans in Massachusetts. And also other states like New York and others are leaning in and really want to make textiles a core part of their recycle policy going forward.

Mithu Mohren (12:54)
Okay, so I get it. The importance of legislation in promoting circularity is absolutely clear. How do collaborative and innovative business models drive textile circularity?

Vibeke (13:07)
We truly believe that what's really needed is cross value chain collaboration and probably a little bit of healthy business model innovation as well because we're building a new value chain and sometimes people ask me so how do you like your new job? I say well we're building a venture but we're also building an industry. We're building a value chain, a new value chain, we're building new partnerships and we're aiming towards new business models.

Mithu Mohren (13:25)
Hmm.

Vibeke (13:32)
And as I mentioned before, the linear textile production is very much driven around efficiency and cost. And I think that there needs also to be a future value chain for textile circularity that brings us to profitability with time. But it also needs to be a value chain that in the short term finds solutions to overcome some of the obstacles that we see. We need to increase collection rates.

We need to scale sorting and preprocessing technologies to be able to enable recycling. And we need to see capital coming through the whole value chain. And we need to see players coming together. And that's what I'm, when I spent the last year looking into this, I'm really encouraged. What we see, we see value chain players, waste management companies identifying textiles as their new key material for collection and sorting. We see traditional.

textile collectors and sorters really looking to shift from their resell business model, very often driven by exports, towards also sorting for recycling. We see fashion brands committing to offtake of recycled material, both cotton and polyesters. Even though we also really see that the brands need to step up, I do see a positivity in many of the large brands. I really want to see.

and drive how recycled material can be a part of the production or part of their future textile production.

Mithu Mohren (15:07)
so it sounds like there's a lot happening in this space already. And I know you're going to partners, you're going to conferences, and there's a lot of conversation that wasn't happening before. One of those is probably around technology. How are we actually going to do this?

So could you tell us more about automated sorting of textiles and why this is crucial to succeed with textile circularity?

Vibeke (15:28)
Absolutely. Yeah, I know it's well spotted. It's lots of movement in the industry. And I think we've come beyond, you know, speaking in conference, it's really, sitting at the conference tables, drawing out, how do we collaborate? How do we build joint ventures? How do we build partnerships across the value chain? And you're right, the automated sorting of textiles is almost like the missing piece of fiber to fiber recycling.

And this is where TOMRA obviously is very invested in closing this gap. And it's really true to our third belief here that we need significant investments to scale the infrastructure for automated sorting. And it's really a precursor for maturing recycling technologies and to enable fiber to fiber. And when I say that, so what does really automated sorting do? Well, it's

technology-driven step up and scale up of sorting. We sort, our technology can sort on material composition, it can sort on colors and with time more parameters. And it does it at a scale and speed that no humans, even if you had a hundred thousand humans in a line sorting very quickly, which is the current manual sorting very often used by

by traditional collectors in resale, you would never get to the speed and scale. And you would never even get to that accuracy because, and that's what we hear from the recyclers and that's both the chemical recyclers, recycling mainly polyesters, and also the mechanical ones, recycling cotton and other natural fibers, is that precision in what's really inside and very often neither our hands nor our eye can really see or feel.

What is it, 96% polyester or is it 94? But that's really important for a chemical recycler or our jeans that are actually very well fitted for mechanical recycling, but is it a 98% cotton blue or does it have 4% elastan? So this is why we, and I'm sure also the players, will...

that the scaling of automated sorting is really key to make textiles circularity happen.

Mithu Mohren (17:52)
So although this is great theory, do you have an example of where some of this is being put into place already?

Vibeke (17:58)
Yeah, we do. So there's several examples. I'd say most of them smaller scale. Tomer has been involved for years already and way before my time in an R&D project in southern Sweden, which is probably the first ever fully automated textile auto sorting facility that takes in post-consumer waste. And post-consumer waste means textile waste from you and me. And they sort on

material and composition and they have a plant up and running that equals 25 kilotons per year, 25,000 tons. So it's not massive compared to the 8 million tons of textile waste, but it's a good starting point and it's a good learning and playing field for us to build the industry.

Mithu Mohren (18:50)
Yeah, well, you have to start somewhere. And actually I've been in that plant and I think I did see one of my t-shirts going through there. So I think you're right. It is you're in my clothes that are in there. Although I certainly don't have 25,000 tons. And I don't think you do either. So I think we're good. So, Vibeke, it all sounds very promising, to be honest. Sounds like things are happening. Things are happening on the ground. People are talking in ways that they've never talked before, coming together as a value chain.

Vibeke (19:03)
I'm happy to hear that, me too.

Mithu Mohren (19:20)
And it's so important to develop new ways to increase circularity. But there are existing processes and technologies like this that are already achieving that goal. Can you tell us more about how TOMRA is actively involved in creating circular value chains?

Vibeke (19:37)
Absolutely. And TOMRA, I mean, TOMRA has a very strong and proud core business, which is our collection business. And we ventured into other powers and we have a strong technology, recycling technology division and strong, obviously, food division. But

TOMRA Textile. We're one out of three ventures in TOMRA. TOMRA, obviously being a listed company and growing and has a very strong entrepreneurial core. We, the ventures, and probably focusing now more on textiles, is very much building on that core and building on our core technology, building on our core technology to sort. TOMRA sorts everything from, you know, metallics to blueberries to...

plastics and now textiles. And we've set out, as I said, we truly believe that we can connect the dots between collected waste textiles and recycling, real recycling of fibre to fibre, enabling circularity with time. But the missing piece is really the sorting and that's what we're trying to achieve. And our strategy is to build and operate. And what does that really mean?

TOMRA, obviously, many know TOMRA well, and we have a strong core, and we're a technology leader within sorting. So TOMRA has normally sold machinery to an existing value chain. In textiles, as we've mentioned several times, the value chain is very new, almost non-existent. We're in the process of connecting the value steps that collect, sort.

recycle. And that's also why we, TOMRA, have said that our strategic positioning really is a vertically integrated position, enabling the whole industry to come together, providing the core of out of sorting. And we've set it to be quite ambitious and to sort 1.5 million tons of post-consumer textile waste in about 10 years. So we should get on it. And that's

brings us to be a market leader if we look to the overall waste, textile waste in the US and EU.

Mithu Mohren (21:49)
Okay, well, that sounds good. We do have years and years and decades even of automated sorting experience. You mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, you mentioned about jeans or clothing washing up on the shores of Ghana. We know this is an issue in southeastern Asia. I would imagine that something, it's not only the mechanical sorting, but really traceability is also something that's very important and pulling

the whole value chain together.

Vibeke (22:22)
Absolutely. And I think data or the lack of so has been a key reason that we probably haven't, you know, haven't seen until quite recently the scrutiny from media, from regulators and from consumers. And going forward, I think we will all, all the stakeholders, ourselves, regulators and media will start questioning where...

is this material really coming from? Where is it traveled? And where is it going? And we have now quite a lot of discussions in the industry whether digital passports could be useful, not only for clothes having virgin material in them, and probably starting out more to document and trace, you know, sustainable supply chain of the early...

parts of the value chain, but also now that if we are to build a circular value chain, it'd be useful and really interesting, I find, as a consumer to know where are these garments traveling from and where are they going to. So I think a digital core is going to be a very important part of building trust and traceability and to be able to really know.

because I think there'll be a quest for knowledge here.

Mithu Mohren (23:51)
I can imagine and it's good to know that as the industry starts to form, that at the ground level, these are things that are already being considered, already being talked about, thought about, developed, instead of playing catch up later, which we have in some of the other applications that you mentioned before, whether that be electronics or plastics or wood or whatever, we're getting, we're trying to get it right from the get-go and that's very, very promising. So as we look ahead, Vibeke, what do you envision?

for the future of the textiles industry. And that's a big one. I know that's a big one, but I think there's no better person to ask.

Vibeke (24:30)
Thank you. That's high pressure. I do envision a future where we can overall live within the means of our planet. And if we were to take that down to textiles, I think I envision a future state of textiles because I don't think textile would disappear.

Mithu Mohren (24:32)
Hahaha

Vibeke (24:55)
I truly believe that we, consumers, have a say and a plea here because we can, through our attitudes and our behaviors, start shifting. It is positive to see consumers really moving into remake, repurpose, reuse, and really asking.

quite direct questions to many of the brands that requiring to know where garments come from and also starting asking questions about when it says that a brand has 5% recycled material, where does it really come from? Is it fiber to fiber? Is it closed loop? Is it or does it come from a bottle or something else? Right. So, but I think it won't. It's I'm not trying to put the

the blame or the burden on the consumer. But I think we consumers can and will have a large part of this. But I also do think that the brands need to step up because the real unlock is where brands start committing in volumes and at sustainable prices. And this is what part of this challenge that we see today is that, yes, we do have

recycled lines and they're selling you know 500 t-shirt here or a thousand paratons over there but not the big volumes and I think to sustain an industry and to really to get the industry to invest to deliver these volumes we need sustainable long-term volume offtake of recycled cotton and polyesters. I think those are kind of the two that I'm kind of envisioning and I think if we see that shift

in consumers asking brands to be responsible and take their part and to offtake in volumes at the right price. And if we see regulations coming through supporting this, not only telling us what needs to be there, but also more so incentivizing the shift, I'm positive because the industry is ready to step up.

Mithu Mohren (27:03)
Okay, sounds like it needs to continue to be a very collaborative effort across the value chain. Vibeke, I'm afraid that's all the time we have today. We can go on and on. I know it's a big challenge. Thank you so much for your time and for guiding us through this very complex topic. I know we barely touched the surface, but fortunately for you...

our listeners, there is an entire white paper ready for you to download that goes into all the details. check the show notes for the link. As we wrap up, let's remember that transitioning to a circular textile value chain isn't just about changing the industry. It's about, as Viveka said, empowering every stakeholder, including consumers, to be a part of the solution.

Every conscious choice, whether in design, consumption, or investment, contributes to a sustainable future. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of TOMRA Talks Circular. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. Until next time.