Where Your Textile Waste Goes After We Collect It

Textiles are the most misunderstood thing we collect. A bag of old clothes feels like a donation, so it is a surprise to learn that most of it never becomes clothing again. It is still worth collecting, and it is still far better than the alternative, but the journey is more industrial than sentimental.

Step one is separation, not cleaning

At our sorting floor, a bag is opened and sorted by hand into four rough grades: wearable, repairable, cuttable and finished. Wearable means clean, dry, and intact enough that someone would choose it. That is a smaller group than people expect, and it is decided almost entirely by condition rather than fabric.

• Wearable: cleaned, dry, no tears, no missing buttons or zips.
• Repairable: sound fabric with fixable damage, which we route to tailoring.
• Cuttable: worn or stained cloth that still has usable fibre.
• Finished: wet, mouldy, oil-soaked or shredded beyond recovery.

Why mixed bags cost everyone

The most common problem is bedding and curtains arriving in the same bag as kitchen waste. Food and moisture turn a recyclable bale into landfill material within days, and it happens to the whole bag, not just the stained piece. A separate dry bag for cloth solves it.