What a Waste!
California has a clothing conundrum. In 2020, residents of the “Golden State” bought and wore up to 530,000 tons of clothing, and some 500,000 of those tons will eventually enter landfills. Less than 1 percent of the materials worn today, meaning 5000 tons, will resurface in clothing manufactured tomorrow.
To date, California has seen relatively little investment in (or research into the benefits of) closed-loop recycling of apparel, so progress on building collection, sorting, and recycling capacity to execute this process has remained limited. A research has been launched to understand what effort building a closed-loop system in California will require, what stakeholders need to participate, and what initial impact the effort may have.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that might be made of the information contained therein. 2021-1-RO01-KA220-VET-000033001
