A report from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute highlights both the promise and the fragility of today’s international textile reuse system. While the study documents a well-organised value chain linking used-clothing collections to thriving second-hand markets, it also underscores that regulatory, logistical and political pressures in Europe risk undermining one of the few proven circular models that actually works.

The collection of clothes and textiles has quickly become a logistical and economic trial for many actors in Europe. Two of the largest operators in Germany have filed for insolvency, and collection organizations in Sweden are struggling to keep operations running. "It's a system on the brink of collapse," says Cristofer Ståhlgren and Lars Råsberg from Human Bridge, Sweden's largest collector of used clothes. "Is this really what they intended?" they ask. Human Bridge has agr