1. Textile recycling background

1.1 Managing limited resources

Textiles are a material that surrounds us on a daily basis. From birth to death, people are in physical contact with textiles almost 24 hours a day: in bedding, clothing, home textiles and furnishings, in transport, in healthcare, and so on. In recent years, the production and consumption of textiles has risen dramatically as a result of global population growth and rising living standards. In the clothing sector, the global textile industry produces some 80 billion new garments a year. Overproduction in the textile industry is partly driven by the fashion industry's belief that consumers need a new collection of clothes for every season. This increases the replacement rate of clothing items and the rate of textile production, and therefore waste...