WRAP is advocating for support through grants, investments and legislation so the secondhand clothing market can fuel the transition towards a more circular fashion ecosystem.
It warns that the UK doesn’t have sufficient infrastructure to accommodate all the clothing and textiles that are being discarded and that recycling and reuse organisations need urgent support to avoid sending textiles waste to landfill. It also highlights the need for improved design to make clothes more durable.
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By GlobalDataWRAP’s latest Textiles Market Situation Report revealed that responsibly donated textiles have seen a significant drop in price. This decline is attributed to the oversaturation of “low-quality fast fashion” items flooding the market, resulting in less revenue for reuse and recycling sectors.
Its most recent estimates point to the UK discarding 711,000 tonnes of post-consumer textiles into residual black bins and general waste at Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). This, WRAP pointed out, is the equivalent of almost 30,000 shipping containers full of cast-off fashion and home textiles items a year.
Of this, evidence from WRAP’s new Waste Hotspots Report found that in England alone, 613,000 tonnes of post-consumer i.e. household textile waste were disposed through household residual waste bins and residual waste banks at Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs).
WRAP noted that 84% of that material was incinerated with energy recovery and 11% sent to landfill. It believes this represents a key concern for an industry with circular economy ambitions.
WRAP further warns a “perfect storm” is brewing, with more post-consumer clothing coming onto the second-hand market and the presence of more fast fashion and low-quality items impacting on the profitability of the centuries old markets that trade in second hand clothing and textiles.
Its latest report shows that the value of recovered textiles from textile banks and charities has fallen massively over the last decade.
According to WRAP, the 2023 figures stood at £172.5 ($216.38) per tonne for textile banks and £255 per tonne for charity shops, while a decade earlier, 2013 figures were more than double at £406 per tonne for textile banks, and significantly higher at £432 per tonne for charity shops.
WRAP emphasised that further to recent sector warnings and current market dynamics, reuse and recycling businesses have been struggling with lower quality goods, increased operational costs and reduced access to labour, making it increasingly difficult for businesses to survive.
Harriet Lamb, CEO at WRAP, believes we’re all buying too many new items and then putting too many clothes in the waste-bin consigning them to landfill or incineration.
Lamb explained: “These are valuable resources, not waste. We should be giving to charity shops who rely on the income, selling on e-commerce, repairing or sharing – anything but the bin! But we also need to support those recycling our pre-loved clothes. Our reports show that fast fashion and low-quality clothing are flooding the market, strangling efforts to make our clothing more sustainable. In the end, we are paying a heavy price for our addiction to cheap clothes.
“The waste, recycling and reuse sectors are under immense pressure. The UK is fortunate to have an existing infrastructure for textile collections that’s existed for generations. To risk losing their knowledge and expertise would be a tragedy. We need action now so that we don’t let this vitally important sector crumble.”
WRAP is calling on people not to throw their unwanted clothing items in the bin but to donate through readily available collection avenues like textile banks, charity shops, and retailer takeback or sell online preloved marketplaces.
It sees a vital need for phased policy intervention, as well as the design of clothes for durability and for the industry to embrace circular business models.
The European Commission, meanwhile, is proposing new rules to prevent and reduce textile waste across the EU by adopting a proposed revision of the Waste Framework Directive.
Recently, WRAP opened a new office in Washington DC to coordinate action on textile waste, plastic pollution and food waste across South, Central and North America.
