Textiles are a very complex product in terms of their construction and use a wide variety of materials including polymers. Often the textile uses mixed materials such a polyester and cotton adding to the challenge of recycling.

The first challenge for the textiles industry is to identify the materials being used in the textile, the second is to sort the waste textile into appropriate stream for recycling and the third is to separate the materials and recycle (into appropriate streams), reuse (fibres) and remanufacture (as appropriate).

In addition to the overall challenge highlighted the production process generates waste materials and some of these are polymeric in nature and challenging to the environment such as microfibres. There is a need to manage these as well as looking to minimising all waste and energy use.

In terms of waste there is a lack of data or a central data point relating to textiles waste and its management, what the implications for downstream processing are to divert more textiles away from residual waste, the quality and quantity of textile materials in residual waste and what material is recovered and re-incorporated into new product or can be.