Most textile waste is still missing

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 collection, sorting, reuse and recycling. But their ability to deliver depends on whether the waste stream can actually be identified and captured. If most discarded textiles continue to end up in mixed household waste, national statistics may offer only a partial view of the real volumes involved.

The gap also complicates target-setting. Governments may introduce ambitious reuse and recycling goals, but those targets risk measuring only the material that enters formal collection systems.

For policymakers, the immediate challenge may therefore be less about setting new percentages and more about understanding the missing flow. Without better collection data, EPR systems could become highly precise mechanisms built on an incomplete picture.

There is an important distinction that is often blurred in the textile waste debate.

Europe clearly has a textile waste problem. Large volumes of clothing and household textiles are discarded every year, and EU rules requiring separate collection of textile waste from January 2025 were introduced to address that internal waste stream.

But that is not the same as proving that Europe’s second-hand exports are, to a significant extent, exports of waste disguised as reusable goods.

The central question in the export debate is narrower: what share of clothing exported as second-hand goods is unsellable at the point of import or first resale in destination markets such as Ghana?

Evidence of textile waste in Europe, rising export volumes, weak traceability, or poor waste-management systems in destination countries may justify concern. But none of these, on their own, demonstrate that large volumes of second-hand clothing exports are actually unsellable waste upon arrival.

Sweden’s recent experience illustrates the policy risk. After the EU requirement for separate textile waste collection took effect in January 2025, Sweden saw a sharp increase in collected textile waste and higher sorting costs. The government later clarified the rules so that torn or stained textiles that obstruct reuse or recycling would no longer have to be collected separately from October 2025. In other words, even within Europe, a broadly framed textile waste rule had to be adjusted when it placed excessive pressure on the collection and sorting system.

That experience matters for the export debate. If regulation treats functioning reuse flows as if they were primarily waste flows, it can shift costs, create bottlenecks and weaken the very systems that keep textiles in use.