Textile recycling - status quo and current developments

This report provides a detailed overview of the currently known technologies for fibre-to-fibre recycling of textiles as well as their strengths and weaknesses. The authors differentiate between mechanical recycling, solvent-based purification, depolymerisation and feedstock recycling. With a share of 65-87%, mechanical recycling is currently the dominant recycling process, which has a lower environmental impact than depolymerisation and feedstock recycling (pyrolysis and gasification), but also leads to a reduction in quality due to a decrease in fibre length. The so-called chemical recycling of used textiles is currently in the development and scaling phase. With regard to mechanical recycling, it should be noted that the largest sales market for the output of current recycling processes lies outside the clothing and textile industry (open-loop recycling). With the EU Ecodesign Regulation, the introduction of mandatory separate collection in the EU from 2025 and the introduction of extended producer responsibility for textiles through a revision of the Waste Framework Directive, a number of legal initiatives are being drafted and some have already been decided that aim to exploit the existing potential of fibre-to-fibre recycling.