Less than 5% of the textile waste produced by European consumers is recycled, according to a Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) report released on Tuesday. In 2019, European consumers produced approximately 11 million tonnes of textile waste, of which only 6.6% was recycled or reused within the EU.
8.41 million tonnes, or 76.7%, of the waste were disposed of or burned inside the European Union.
Exports of textile waste totaling 1.83 million tonnes, mostly to Asia and Africa, accounted for 16.7% of the total.
Based on data from the European Commission, the ZWE found that only 1.7% of the waste (0.19 million tonnes) was reused in Europe, while 4.9% (0.54 million tonnes) was recycled there.
According to the NGO, more than 15 million tonnes of textile waste will
By 2035, European consumers are expected to generate over 15 million tonnes of textile waste, according to the NGO.
Furthermore, according to ZWE, just 33 percent of the roughly 12 million tonnes of textiles that were brought to the European market in 2019 were made there.
In Europe, the textile recycling industry is still quite small. The NGO noted that the used market is more developed. Additionally, it discovered that some nations have "more advanced than others" circular economy policies, with France being an exception.The NGO emphasized that France has "much higher textile waste collection and recycling rates than the European average." But, it issued a warning that the data was not totally comparable, especially given that the reference years—2019 for Europe and 2022 for France—were different.