Circular Economy in the Textile Industry: A Review of Technology, Practice, and Opportunity

Rapid expansion of the global textile industry has accelerated both resource consumption and the scale of associated waste streams. An emerging body of recycling technology research aims to mitigate these impacts by enabling more circular material supply chains. While technologies are well described in a technical sense, literature focuses heavily on chemical methods and provides limited assessment of their physical and practical potential in the context of contemporary textile market conditions. This paper reviews these technologies in technical terms, and then establishes a qualitative framework for material value retention and waste avoidance potential with which to evaluate their efficacy. Analysis highlights that few recycling technologies are demonstrably compatible with either the attributes of post-consumer textile waste streams or the pace and scale of deployment necessary to address consumption and disposition patterns. We also highlight that both mechanical and chemical recycling are capacity constrained, and generally yield low material retention and solid waste avoidance potential per unit mass relative to other circularity strategies. Given these constraints, we posit that systems-level shifts in product and business model design may be useful as strategies to both reduce impacts upstream and mitigate waste volume, in turn supporting improved recycling rates.