At H&M's flagship store in Paris, it's hard to find clothes that aren't made from "recycled materials."
Last year, 79% of the polyester in the company's collections was from recycled materials, and next year it wants everything to be recycled.
The Swedish giant in the so-called fast fashion told AFP that the recycled materials allow "the industry to reduce its dependence on virgin polyester produced from fossil fuels".
The problem is that "93% of all recycled textiles today come from plastic bottles, not old clothes," said Urska Trunk of the campaign group Changing Markets. In other words, from fossil fuels.
And while a plastic bottle can be recycled five or six times, a recycled polyester T-shirt "can never be recycled again," Trunk stressed.
According to the non-profit organization Textile Exchange, almost all recycled polyester is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) from plastic bottles.
In Europe, most textile waste is thrown away or incinerated. Only 22% is recycled or reused, with most of it becoming insulation, mattress filling or cleaning cloths.
"Less than one percent of the fabrics used to make clothes are recycled into new clothes," the European Commission told AFP.
Recycling textiles is "much more complicated than other materials such as glass or paper," according to Lenzing, an Austrian manufacturer known for its wood fibers.
For starters, clothes made from more than two fibers are currently considered non-recyclable.
Garments that can be recycled should be sorted by color and then have zippers, buttons, studs and other materials removed from them.
This is often expensive and time-consuming, experts say, although pilot projects are starting to emerge in Europe, says Greenpeace's Lisa Panhuber.
Reusing cotton might seem like an obvious answer. But when cotton is recycled, its quality drops so much that it often has to be mixed with other materials, experts say.
To deal with the problem, fashion brands are using recycled plastic, to the ire and frustration of the food industry, which pays for the collection of used bottles.
"Let's be clear: this is not circular," the drinks industry wrote in a scathing open letter to the European Parliament last year, condemning the "worrying trend" of the fashion industry making claims "of adherence to green policies linked to the use of recycled materials".
Recycling polyester is another dead end, according to Laurent Veillard of the Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) network.
It is often impure and mixed with other materials such as elastane or lycra, which "prevents any recycling," she insists.
Jean-Baptiste Sultan of the French NGO Carbone 4 also condemned polyester: "From its production to its recycling (polyester) pollutes water, air and soil."
In fact, environmental groups are demanding that the textile industry stop producing polyester altogether, even though it accounts for more than half of their production, according to the Textile Exchange.
According to 2019 data from the European Environment Agency (EEA), almost half of the textile waste collected in Europe ends up in African second-hand markets or, more commonly, is dumped in "open dumps".
Another 41% of the bloc's textile waste goes to Asia, mostly "in specialized economic zones where it is sorted and processed."
"Used textile materials are mostly recycled into industrial rags or stuffing, or re-exported for recycling in other Asian countries or for reuse in Africa," the agency said.
A new EU rule adopted in November aims to ensure that exported waste is recycled rather than landfilled.
But the EEA admitted that "there is a lack of consistent data on the quantities and fate of used textiles and textile waste in Europe".
In fact, NGOs note that much of Europe's waste clothing sent to Asia goes to "Export Processing Zones" which, according to Paul Roland of the Campaign for Clean Clothes, are "notorious for providing 'illegal' exclaves, in which do not meet even the low labor standards of Pakistan and India".
Exporting "clothes to countries with low labor costs for sorting is also a nightmare from a carbon footprint perspective," said Mark Minassian of Pellenc ST, which makes optical sorting machines used in recycling.
The terrible truth is that "recycling is a clothing myth," insists Greenpeace consumer expert Panhuber.
But beyond all that, "the biggest problem is the amount of clothes being produced," said Celeste Grillet of Carbone 4.
For Panhuber and Greenpeace, the solution is simple: buy less clothes.
"We need to reduce consumption, repair, reuse and recycle," she concluded. /BGNES