Sweden’s recycling yards are overcrowded with clothing after an EU-wide prohibition of textiles has come into force this year, which causes the overloaded municipalities to demand the takeover of responsibility from the fast-fashion groups.
“A huge amount comes in every day. It’s crazy, it is an enormous increase,” said Brian Kelly, General Secretary of the charity Laden 2 in Stockholm, where rows of containers with discarded clothing were overcrowded.
Since the beginning of this year, the EU countries have had to have separate textile disposal, in addition to the existing procedures for glass, paper and food waste.
The aim is to promote a circulatory system in which textiles are sorted and reused or recycled if they are not too damaged.
“In January and February of this year, we found an increase in the textile collection by 60 percent compared to the same period in the previous year,” said Karin Sundin, an expert in textile waste at Stockholm’s waste and recycling company Stockholm Vatten OCH AVfall.
After sorting the textiles, around 60 to 70 percent are intended for reuse and 20 to 30 percent for recycling as upholstery, insulation or composite materials.
Around seven to ten percent are burned to generate energy, according to the Swedish environmental protection authority.
This is an enormous improvement compared to the time before the new law, according to Expert: Inside, who find that discarded clothing has been systematically burned earlier.
Large quantities
However, a lack of infrastructure in Sweden means that used clothing is largely exported abroad, especially after Lithuania, where it is sorted, reused or burned for energy generation.
“We do not have the large sorting systems that can use everything as they have, for example, in Eastern Europe,” said Sundin. “The reason for this is that it is very labor -intensive (and) costs a lot of money,” she told AFP on a tour of the Ostberga recycling center in southern Stockholm.
The Swedes throw 90,000 tons of textiles away annually, which is ten kilograms per person, according to the Swedish nature conservation association. According to data from the European Environment Agency, the EU average is 19 kilograms (as of 2022), compared to 17 kilograms in 2019.
The clothing industry is also dirty.
2,500 liters of water and one kilogram of chemicals are required to produce a T-shirt with a weight of 135 grams, says Yvonne Augustson, consultant at the Swedish environmental protection authority.
“That means greenhouse gas emissions of about two to five kilos,” she said. “In Sweden, a piece of clothing is worn 30 times. If this doubles to 60 times – which seems reasonable – the climate impact is reduced by half,” she said.
The textile sorting in Sweden is carried out by the municipalities, many of which have been overloaded since the introduction of the new law due to the amounts obtained. In the sparsely populated northern regions, some cities, like Kiruna, continue to burn textiles because they have no buyers for the articles.
It is expected that fast fashion companies such as H&M and Zara will ultimately play a role in coping with the associated waste, and negotiations run at European level to determine their responsibility.
According to a preliminary agreement that the EU member states achieved in February, the clothing companies will be responsible for the end of the lifespan of the products they have sold and will have to bear the costs for collection, sorting, reuse and recycling.
Setting change
The idea is to encourage fast-fashion retailers: to be encouraged to make clothes that are designed for durability, “said Augustson.
The Swedish brand H&M announced AFP, it greeted steps in this direction, but also the consumers: inside must change their attitude. Everyone should “not buy more than five new items of clothing a year,” said Beatrice Rindevall, head of the Swedish nature conservation association, who regularly organizes clothing exchange campaigns.
In the city of Linköping, there was a clothing exchange with stands on a sunny spring day on a student campus, which contained everything from a bright pink jacket with suspension sleeves to faded jeans, pockets and striped T-shirts.
“People can give us well -preserved clothes that they no longer wear, (and) exchange them for something else,” said Eva Vollmer volunteer. “We focus on creating a solution so that people actually have an alternative.”
This article was used with digital tools translated.
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