This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of July 26, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
A reader, Mireille Kirouac, asks us if there is a place where it is possible to drop off clothes that are too worn to be worn so that the fiber can be recycled.
The news is not very good. Recyc-Québec admits that the outlets for textile recycling in Quebec are very limited, because the separation and sorting of fibers is a difficult operation that represents significant technological and financial challenges. As we know, a garment can be made up of several fibers mixed together.
In 2019-2020, textiles accounted for 6% of the materials sent to landfills in Quebec, an increase of nearly 3 percentage points compared to 2011.
Some projects
In the hope of stimulating initiatives to find outlets, Recyc-Québec has financed several projects, including that of Atelier B, which aims to recover the company’s clothing and production scraps. The organization has also given a boost to General Recycled for the recycling of aramid fibers used in firefighter uniforms. For its part, CRB Innovation has received funding for the recycling and recovery of sanitary textiles. Other projects could be added to the list.
The fact remains that, for the time being, this does not solve the problem of citizens who would like to dispose of their old clothes responsibly.
The H&M chain invites its customers to drop off in its stores the clothes they no longer wear, regardless of their condition and regardless of the brand. In exchange, the company offers a discount for a future purchase. H&M claims to have recovered 140,000 tonnes of clothing globally since 2013 and 18,800 tonnes in 2020. Its campaign has drawn widespread criticism, however. Are the clothes collected really recycled or do they, at least in part, end up in landfills somewhere in the world? Our request for information from the chain based in Stockholm, Sweden, did not obtain a response.
The campaign led by H&M was also seen as a way to divert attention from the major environmental impacts of the fashion industry, considered one of the most polluting in the world.
This industry is singled out mainly because of the large quantity of resources required to manufacture the clothing, whether it is water consumption, the use of pesticides and chemicals or greenhouse gas emissions. attributable to the transportation of clothing.
To make a simple t-shirt, you need 2600 liters of water, according to calculations made by the Water Footprint Network.
In the United States, 12 million tons of textile materials are sent to landfill each year and only 1.7 million tons are recycled.
Thrift stores and composting, options?
For their part, thrift stores in Quebec generally only collect clothes and fabrics in good condition.
“We always say: we give to Renaissance what we would give to a friend or a member of his family, explains Marie-Claude Masson, director of communications at Renaissance. That said, we do get a lot of donations of unusable clothes — some can be sold to partners who turn them into fluff, rags, etc. But, we have to destroy some of it as well — there are costs for Renaissance. »
The ecocentres in Montreal also specify that they only accept clothing and fabrics in good condition. However, the City paid $500,000 to Renaissance for the realization of a pilot project on behavior change and the development of a new industry, carried out in collaboration with Vestechpro, a clothing research and innovation centre.
And composting? Even though clothes made of 100% natural fibers like cotton are compostable in theory, they are generally refused by municipalities, says Recyc-Québec. The manufacture of these garments may involve chemicals. They may also contain buttons, labels or rubber bands made of synthetic materials.
While waiting for real outlets to be found for textiles, Recyc-Québec suggests that citizens show creativity by making rags or, depending on each person’s talents, by creating reusable bags, gift wrapping or simply by using of these fabrics to cover objects to be stored.
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