Only 15 percent of discarded household textiles and footwear in the EU are collected separately, according to the European Environment Agency’s new textile module. The same data estimates that Europeans generate around 16 kilograms of textile waste per person every year. That leaves a basic question at the heart of Europe’s emerging textile policy: where does the remaining 85 percent go? Across the EU, extended producer responsibility systems are being introduced to finance c

The second-hand industry may well be one of the most misunderstood industries in the world. All sorts of rumors circulate in the media and in debates that most of it is garbage or that what you donate to collections is just burned. But for many years the second-hand industry has been a well-developed trade chain that generates not only cheap clothes but also jobs and a circular economy. Perhaps the most important ingredient in the trade chain is sorting clothes. It is a craft