Anyone who wants to understand the interaction of consumer behavior – especially through fast and ultra-fast fashion – and the mountains of textile waste in the Global South should definitely watch the documentary “Textile waste – the fight against disposable fashion” from ZDF’s Planet E series . She explores the question of how disposable fashion could become a cycle of clothing.
The film begins with footage of the huge mountains of clothes in the Chilean Atacama Desert: activist Juan Jose Saldana, who lives on the edge of the desert, tracks down illegal dumps and documents them on social media. “After the big scandal, everyone tries to unload the clothes as unnoticed as possible,” says Saldana.
At the end of 2021, pictures of the textile mountains reached the public and caused a stir. At first glance, things seem to have calmed down since then, but the sad truth is that the truck drivers are now simply taking the textile waste deeper into the desert. The clothing, largely made of polyester, is also burned and emits toxic fumes. In addition to the destruction of the environment, the mountains of clothing are a health hazard for the local residents. And Chile is not an isolated case – there are also mountains of clothing in East Africa, as documented by the environmental protection organization Greenpeace.
How do these mountains of textile waste come about?
According to estimates by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, about one million articles of clothing are made every five minutes; the amount has more than doubled since the turn of the millennium. All because of increased demand; prices have fallen. According to Greenpeace, Germans buy around 60 items of clothing a year, with around one in five remaining unworn.
And at the end of their lives they end up in old clothes containers; in Germany about one million tons per year. From there they go to sorting plants such as in Apolda in Thuringia. Less than 10 percent are accepted by non-profit organizations, the rest are first sorted by hand into rough product groups and then sorted according to different quality levels. Around 350,000 used textiles are sorted here every day.
“Sorting is laborious and expensive, but it pays off,” says Thomas Ahlmann, Managing Director of FairWertung eV “Only full sorting minimizes the amount of waste,” he adds, and this is financed through the sale of second-hand clothing. In Apolda, however, only 50-55 percent of old clothes are classified as wearable, and the trend is falling due to the poor quality of fast fashion.
“This leaves more and more for recycling, which does not cover costs; the proportion of waste is increasing and has to be disposed of at a cost,” explains Ahlmann. “If this proportion keeps increasing, the system will eventually tip over and then it will no longer pay off, and then no one will collect or sort anymore,” he warns. Through downcycling, the waste is turned into cleaning rags or insulating material; the rest is incinerated with household waste.
In Chile, for example, these utilization structures do not exist; moreover, no import controls for importers. There is no end-of-life system for the garments. For the Global North, shipping to the Global South is an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle. “Most consumers don’t even know what to do with their old clothes,” says Jochen Straehle, Professor of International Fashion Management at Reutlingen University. So what’s the solution?
Rent, repair, second-hand
For Vreni Jäckle, co-founder & co-managing director of the community platform Fashion Changers, a solution on the consumer side begins with the question “Where is my part in this whole thing?” She sees clothing as a resource and wants to show an alternative world of fashion.
“Recombine instead of re-consume,” advises Jäckle, referring to the loaning of clothing as well as repairing it, in order to understand that worn and defective does not mean garbage. She wants to educate against the throwaway mentality. According to KPMG, second-hand could account for a 20 percent market share in fashion retail by 2023.
degradation of textiles
However, not only the mass of the textiles is problematic, but also the material and its composition. Outdoor clothing in particular has fallen into disrepute in recent years due to very persistent and resistant “eternal chemicals” such as PFCs. They accumulate in the environment and quite a few are toxic. Polyester remains a burden because it is almost impossible to degrade.
Certification bodies such as Hohenstein in Baden-Württemberg check textiles for harmful ingredients and provide them with environmental seals. They also examine how textiles degrade in the soil. “If a material comes from nature, then there are definitely bacteria that break it down,” reports Ivonne Schramm, Head of Oeko-Tex at Hohenstein. “This is easy with cotton, but more difficult with dyed cotton. Making a garment that is biodegradable is extremely complex.”
Circular design
To do this, all components would have to be considered and replaced accordingly, for example polyester buttons with nutshells and sewing threads made of polyester with those made of biodegradable materials. This is where the Berlin company Circular Fashion comes in, which helps brands and designers to develop circular collections.
Fiber-to-fiber recycling
Another way to reduce the textile mountains is fiber-to-fiber recycling, which is technically still in its infancy. Only one percent of all textiles are currently recycled because they are made from blended fabrics such as cotton, polyester and elastane. They are also subjected to chemical treatment such as bleaching, dyeing or impregnation, which makes the recycling process even more difficult.
Every previous possibility of fiber-to-fiber recycling, whether mechanical or chemical, is currently still expensive. In other words, it’s cheaper to produce a new garment, which is why companies are going down this route.
A button that is a digital chip, such as that created by Circular Fashion, can help with sorting and thus with recycling: It contains information on the composition of a piece of clothing and for consumers on collection points at the end of a product’s life.
Political requirements
All these approaches will hardly bear fruit on a large scale if they are not politically supported. The focus here is on the European Commission’s Textile Strategy, which started in 2022. The goals are that fast fashion should be over by 2030 (in the EU).
In addition, the textile products on the EU market should be durable and recyclable by then, mostly made of recycled fibers and free of environmentally harmful pollutants.
And, manufacturers should take responsibility for their products, even if they become waste. All textiles should also get a digital product pass.
For Strähle, these requirements are a challenge for textile companies; Environmentalists also complain that textile waste exports have not yet been addressed, i.e. banned.
“Textile waste – the fight against disposable fashion”
A film by Tanja Dammertz
Camera: Felix Greif, Oliver Gurr, Alexis Jentzsch, Oliver Schmieg, Holger Schnitzer
Editing: Hauke Ketelsen
Editor: Eva Schmidt
Direction of the show: Catherine Kipp
28 minutes