The waste textile recycling industry shows severe profit divergence: within the same market, some profit while others lose. The core difference lies not in the industry itself, but in sorting and grading capabilities and the choice of collection channels.

Key Points

  • Waste textiles fall into two categories: waste yarn, waste fabric, and scraps generated during fabric production, and discarded clothing, footwear, and soft furnishings.
  • Recycling processing is divided into physical recycling (mechanically decomposed and crushed for reuse in fabric production) and chemical recycling (chemically decomposed and reused as raw materials).
  • Sorting involves three steps: assessing recyclability, distinguishing soft from hard materials, and identifying fiber composition; Summer Clothing A1 requires no dirt, no damage, no fading, and at least 80% new.

Sorting Capability Is the Watershed Between Profit and Loss

There is an industry consensus that old items also come in different grades. Only by precisely collecting and classifying according to the receiving end's demand for waste textile types and grades can profits be maximized. For example, the Summer Clothing A1 category includes dark men's jeans, men's shirts, jerseys, men's T-shirts, calf-length dresses, multi-pocket pants, bras, men's shorts, underwear, knee-length gauze skirts, and gauze tops. Such goods must be free of dirt, damage, and fading, at least 80% new; white items are not accepted (except gauze). The A2 category covers nylon sports jackets, nylon pants, chemical fiber mesh jackets, women's T-shirts, short dresses, thin men's dress pants, swimwear, stretch pants, and knee-length skirt-pants. Category B has looser standards: slightly dirty, slightly damaged, slightly yellowed men's jeans, jerseys, summer children's clothing, and school uniform short sleeves can all be included.

Beyond summer clothing, winter down jackets, cotton, and bags each have their own classification systems. Take bags as an example: Category A covers cloth bags (plush bags, padded bags), laptop bags, shopping bags, travel agency bags, plastic bags, hard bags, etc., allowing peeling and glue detachment; mixed goods include all kinds of bags with broken zippers, pearl bags, dirty/damaged/rusted bags, and bags with damaged parts.

Ms. Chen is a sorting supervisor at an old clothes recycling company...

Source: Why Do Some People Profit from Old Clothes Recycling While Others Lose Money? · Originally published on 2022-08-03