The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)

China’s landfills brim with textile waste as fast fashion triumphs over recycling

AT A factory in Zhejiang province on China’s eastern coast, two mounds of discarded cotton clothing and bed linens, loosely separated into dark and light colors, pile up on a workroom floor. Jacket sleeves, collars and brand labels protrude from the stacks as workers feed the garments into shredding machines.

It’s the first stage of a new life for the textiles, part of a recycling effort at the Wenzhou Tiancheng Textile Company, one of the largest cotton recycling plants in China.

Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12% recycled worldwide, according to fashion sustainabi­lity nonprofit Ellen Macarthur Foundation. Even less — only 1% — are castoff clothes recycled into new garments; the majority is used for low- value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.

Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, where more than 26 million tons of clothes are thrown away each year. Most of it ends up in landfills.

And factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by “fast fashion” — cheap clothes made from unrecyclab­le synthetics, not cotton.

Produced from petrochemi­cals that contribute to climate change, air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70% of domestic clothing sales in China.

China’s footprint is worldwide: E- commerce juggernaut brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest producers of cheap fashion, selling in more than 150 countries.

To achieve a game- changing impact, what fashion expert Shaway Yeh calls “circular sustainabi­lity” is needed among major Chinese clothing brands so waste is avoided entirely.

“You need to start it from recyclable fibers and then all these waste textiles will be put into use again,” she said. But that is an elusive goal: Only about 20% of China’s textiles are recycled, according to the government and almost all of that is cotton.

While China is a global leader in the production of electric cars and electric- powered public transit and has set a goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, its efforts in promoting fashion sustainabi­lity and recycling textiles have taken a back seat.

According to a report this year from independen­t fashion watchdog Remake assessing major clothing companies on their environmen­tal, human rights and equitabili­ty practices, there’s little accountabi­lity among the best- known brands.

Also getting zero were U. S. label SKIMS, co- founded by Kim Kardashian, and low- price brand Fashion Nova. U. S. retailer Everlane was the highest- scorer at 40 points, with only half of those for sustainabi­lity practices.

China’s domestic policy doesn’t help. Cotton recycled from used clothing is banned from being used to make new garments inside China. This rule was initially aimed at stamping out fly- by- night Chinese operations recycling dirty or otherwise contaminat­ed material.

Making matters worse, many Chinese consumers are unwilling to buy used items anyway, something the Wenzhou factory sales director, Kowen Tang, attributes to increasing household incomes. Still, among younger Chinese, a growing awareness of sustainabi­lity has contribute­d to the emergence of fledgling “remade” clothing businesses.

And therein lies the real problem, said Sheng Lu, professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. “... consumers are not willing to pay higher for clothing made from recycled materials, instead they actually expect a lower price,” he said.

With higher costs in acquiring, sorting and processing used garments, he doesn’t see sustainabl­e fashion succeeding on a wide scale in China, where clothes are so cheap to make. AP