Contribution of waste management to a sustainable textile sector

Abstract

With increasing textile consumption and limited sorting and recycling capacities, the EU faces major challenges in terms of managing its textile waste. This study investigates the environmental and socio-economic impacts of explorative policy scenarios for a more sustainable textile waste management system in Europe. These scenarios differ substantially in the amounts of textile waste generated and separately collected, closed-loop recycling capacities and textile waste exports. Our results show that sustainable textile waste management remains highly relevant for the sector. Still, without addressing in parallel prevention of textile waste generation via production and consumption patterns, a climate-neutral and circular textiles sector will be hard to achieve. Interventions in the waste management of textiles could reduce global warming impacts by up to 22.3 Mt CO₂ per year, which translates to an 18% sector-wide impact by 2035. Depending on the intervention(s), the estimated required investment at present amounts to between 7 and 33 billion EUR. The study provides a valuable starting point for evidence-based decisions on future textile policymaking in Europe.

Keywords: Full environmental life cycle costing; Investment; Life cycle assessment; Mass flow analysis; Policy; Recycling.