Mind the Gaps
ACP has a vision of a world where textiles are in continuous circulation, reducing the need for virgin materials and lowering associated GHG emissions. This informs our mission to divert textiles from landfill for textile-to-textile recycling in circular supply networks. To ground this work, we have been busy researching textile waste, collection, sorting, pre-processing and mechanical and chemical recycling.
We have learned that the industry and those who have undertaken the transformation to circularity have a big job ahead of them. In one year, the US alone sends the equivalent of 33 Great Pyramids of textile waste to landfill. Entirely new systems are needed to tackle the enormity of the problem -- this includes solving for scale, technology requirements, geographic availability, and economics. Within this framework are gaps large and small, visible and invisible, between where we are now and where we want to go. As realists, we recognize that we must begin with what is feasible now to catalyze the sort of transformational progress that will enable us to realize our vision.
It will take everyone we know in the industry -- and many not currently in our circle -- to connect the missing pieces that will make for functioning circular textile to textile supply systems.
We all recognize some of the big obvious gaps in textile to textile recycling:
Robust post-consumer textile collection
The ability to sort textiles by fiber type
The ability to remove hard parts and trims
Recycling technologies that can both technically and economically create virgin quality equivalents
Brands and retailer demand for recycled materials
Local and federal policy to encourage textile circularity;
and a few of the less obvious missing links:
Enough materials that fit into sorting fractions to provide an ROI for sorters
A match between the scale of recycling capabilities and the textile waste problem
We know that single fibers are easier to recycle, but customs classifications that result in lower duty rates for blended materials are counter-productive. We need policies that support circularity.
Data to understand fiber type, trims and chemical composition by product type to make sortation easier.
Markets for materials not appropriate for recycling.
The innovators that recognized a gap in the market and have initiated the development of advanced recycling technologies have put us on a path toward truly circular materials. We hope our research illuminates additional gaps that inspire innovations that put the industry on an accelerated path to develop new, robust circular supply chain systems. Time to get started.
