Sun Huaibin, vice president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, disclosed at the 2021 Textile Industry Waste Textile Resource Utilization Exchange Meeting that China's total annual fiber consumption is about 30 million tons, with per capita fiber consumption reaching 22.4 kilograms, making it the world's largest textile and apparel producer and consumer. However, Pan Yonggang, vice president and secretary-general of the China Renewable Resources Recycling Association, pointed out at the same year's Waste Textile Recycling Technology Exchange Meeting that the annual recycling volume of waste textiles is less than 10% of the output.

A reporter's investigation found that both traditional offline recycling bins and online appointment-based recycling generally face the dilemma of "not being fed enough." Li Dongjing, head of a public welfare organization in Guangxi, introduced that the organization placed more than 1,400 recycling bins in Nanning, each with a capacity of 150 kilograms, but the average monthly recycling volume was less than 17 kilograms. Since 2017, 117 social donation stations have been set up in Nanning, Liuzhou, Guilin and other places, but in four years only 27 stations received a total of about 14 tons of waste textiles.

Online channels have grown but remain limited in scale. The recycling app Baijingyu revealed that in 2020 it recycled about 18,000 tons of clothing nationwide, and from 2021 to October 20 it recycled about 25,000 tons. The person in charge estimated that the stock of old clothing is about 28 million tons, the national annual recycling total is about 230,000 tons, and the internet model accounts for only 20% of that.

There are multiple reasons for the low recycling rate. Li Dongjing pointed out that some commercial institutions recycle old clothes in the name of "public welfare" and "caring" and then profit from them, damaging social credibility; problems such as recycling bins being vandalized or moved by property management to corners where they are hard to find are also common. Zhao Xiaodan, executive director of Beijing Hummingbird Forest Environmental Technology Development Co., Ltd., believes that the value of waste clothing is difficult to determine, and citizens' willingness to participate is not high; internet companies also face traffic constraints, and most users do not know about recycling channels.

In terms of where the items go, old clothes that meet the conditions for secondary wear are sorted, disinfected and exported to countries with import demand; those that can no longer be worn are made into greenhouse materials, recycled yarn, cleaning cloths, mops, or processed into automotive damping and insulation materials. One online recycling platform estimates that every 1 kilogram of old clothes recycled can reduce about 12.33 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions.

Zhao Xiaodan revealed that the current recycling cost of summer clothing is about 5,500 to 6,500 yuan per ton, and the export price is significantly higher on this basis, leaving considerable profit space, and the industry prospects are worth anticipating. He also stressed that the charitable nature of old clothing recycling should not be exaggerated, and the healthy development of the industry needs to rely on a market-oriented mechanism of paid recycling; public welfare and business must have clear boundaries to avoid "selling dog meat under a sheep's head."

Source: Where do the old clothes you don't want go? A reporter's investigation found... · Originally published on 2021-10-31