A jumper’s journey

What happens to your unwanted clothes when you get rid of them? The question is particularly pressing at Christmas, when our powerful gift giving customs may leave us with unwearable, unreturnable, unwanted clothing: a hideous Christmas jumper, perhaps, destined to be worn only once; or some thick woollen socks (very much like marmite, you either love them or you hate them); or perhaps your new gloves will prompt you to get rid of that old pair with a hole in. At this time of year, clothing of all degrees of quality is destined for the bin.

Dirty clothes

Neither the environmental and social impacts associated with the production and manufacture of textiles nor what happens to them once they are discarded or recycled is widely understood. However, I had the opportunity to visit a major clothes sorting facility in the West Midlands before Christmas, and what I learned there and from subsequent reading was a bit of an eye-opener for me.

Consider some examples of the resources invested in clothes and the pollution that comes from their production:

• The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is energy-intensive and emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter and acidic gases, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory diseases
• It can take more than 20,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of cotton, equivalent to a single T-shirt and a pair of jeans
• Globally, cotton accounts for 11% of annual pesticide use, although production occupies only 2.4% of the world’s arable land

This makes unwanted clothing a valuable resource, leading to a growth in interest in what happens when textiles and clothing are discarded. A recent WRAP report investigating textile consumption and arisings in the UK estimated that if you throw your jumper away it may well join nearly 1 million tonnes of textiles sent to landfill through household residual waste collections. If just 10% of this was recycled or reused, it is estimated that around 3m tonnes of CO₂ equivalents would be saved.

With funding stretched, local authorities can ill afford to miss out on income. WRAP estimates that in 2010 nearly £250m worth of re-usable or recyclable textiles were discarded via kerbside residual waste collections; instead of deriving an income from it, authorities will have paid to bury or burn this material.

Textiles on their travels

So how can that ugly jumper dodge ending up as landfill? The majority of textiles that enter the re-use and recycling market come through donations to charity shops, with smaller contributions from clothing bring banks and local authority kerbside textile collections.

The first and best option for your jumper is that it catches the eye of a charity shop customer and enjoys a new lease of life. However, if it is too hideous to have customer appeal it will be sold on to a textile reprocessor along with other unwanted items for up to £580 per tonne. However if you put your jumper in a clothing bring bank it would be sold for a much lower price, ranging from £250 to £340 per tonne, due to the typically poorer quality and higher contamination potential of clothes collected by this route.

Once at the reprocessing facility, the quality of the jumper will decide its end destination. Quality can be influenced by characteristics such as how worn out an item is, and whether it is soiled, dirty or wet. Reprocessors cannot afford to spend time and money washing and drying clothing; therefore it is likely that soiled and wet clothing will be sent straight to landfill. Clothing is sorted by hand into male and female clothing, and categorised as low, medium or high quality, as this is the most reliable method of separation. If the jumper is considered to be a high quality ‘fashion’ item (although this is highly subjective), it may be mixed with other high quality items such as trousers, shirts, and jackets, and sold to wholesalers in Eastern European countries such as Poland, Ukraine and Hungary.

Jumpers bale out – clothes for export. Photo by Clare Pitts-Tucker

Alternatively, if the jumper is deemed to be in the mid to low range of both quality and value, it will be packed and compressed with other jumpers into 45kg bundles. Bundles medium quality clothing are destined for export to sub Saharan African countries such as Ghana and Kenya, whilst low quality clothing is exported to Southern Asian countries such as Pakistan. However, if your jumper is deemed low in quality and value, or badly damaged (singed by wandering flames from the Christmas pudding perhaps), it will be recycled into rags to be used for cleaning.

Exporting clothing is not necessarily a simple process. For example India protects its own textile industry by requiring all second hand clothing imports to be mutilated before crossing the border. Mutilated clothing items will then be unravelled to re-spin yarn for manufacturing ‘new’ items. Certain port authorities have been known to temporarily declare second hand textile shipments illegal, and seize all the material at the port before declaring imports legal once again. Textile reprocessors need strong clearing agents to reduce the likelihood of this happening.

However, the quality of clothing collected for re-use and recycling through charity shops, bring banks and kerbside collections has declined in recent years, possibly due to the increase of cheap high street fashion (dare I say Primark?). This is having an impact on the price at which textile reprocessors can sell clothing for re-use and recycling overseas. As the largest source of relatively good quality second hand clothing in the UK, charity shops still expect a high price for their textiles. However, the previously stable export market is now buying less of the UK’s second hand clothing, as material available from other European countries is considerably cheaper even if it may be of an even poorer quality.

How to change clothes

To avoid Christmas jumpers heading to landfill prematurely, and enable the most use and value to be gained from yours (even if it truly is unbearable to wear) there are several key opportunities throughout its life cycle:

• First, when buying a piece of clothing either for yourself or another person, consider whether you can buy second hand, or look at the more ‘environmentally friendly’ items, such as those made with organically grown cotton, natural (as opposed to man-made) fabrics;
• Increase the useful lifetime of your clothes by taking care of them, and reduce the environmental impact of laundry by washing at a cool temperature with eco products; and
• Finally, when the time to part with your beloved (or despised) Christmas jumper comes, keep it out of a landfill site by donating it to a charity shop or a textiles collection service – and don’t let it get wet!

Although these are simple suggestions, as a young woman that likes to keep up with the trends, I certainly appreciate that following them is not always easy. However, the size of the economic and environmental benefits make it worth putting in the effort and to encourage others to follow in your footsteps.