Textile recycling facts you didn’t know about

1.We say goodbye to a lot of clothes in the UK every year:

The UK sends 700,000 tonnes of clothing to textile recycling centres, textile banks, clothes collections and to charity each year. That’s enough to fill 459 Olympic-size swimming pools.

2. Textile recycling doesn’t always mean turning old clothes into new clothes:

There is sometimes a bit of a misconception that all textiles that are recycled are turned into new textiles and then new clothes. We’d love to see this in the future, but the tech isn’t there at the moment. The majority of textiles are mechanically recycled which means they are shredded. This shredding can be used for things like insulation and stuffing. At Reskinned, we do also offer chemical recycling which means we’re one of the only people in the UK who work with factories to turn certain materials into new materials.

3. Textile recycling started during the 18th century in the Napoleonic wars:

Textile recycling has been around since the eighteenth century when the Napoleonic War caused virgin wool shortages and required that wool fibres be turned into new yarns.

4. Any textile can be recycled:

Yes, even shoes. We’re not saying it’s easy, but there is definitely no need for any textiles to end up in landfill.

5. There are THOUSANDS of textile recycling banks in the UK:

You’re never far from a drop off point for your old clothes. If you head to Recycle Now, you can put in your postcode and see just how near you are.

6. Textile recycling boomed during the Victorian Era in the UK:

Ever heard of the Rag and Bone man? No, we don’t mean the singer. Textile recycling for the Victorians was a major industry and many of the urban poor made their living from collecting rags which were processed in paper mills before eventually being made into printed materials, such as newspapers and books. The Rag and Bone man would wheel a cart through the streets of cities and exchange other people’s stuff in return for cash or other rewards.

7. The birth of “make do and mend” created a reuse nation:

The pressures of WWII meant there were limited materials and resources. People from all backgrounds had to get creative. When children outgrew knitted items, they were unravelled and knitted into new items, like mittens or scarves. “Socks were darned and clothes were mended: every home had a ‘button box’ full of buttons taken from old shirts to be used again. Shirt collars, once they had become frayed, would be carefully unpicked, turned inside out and sewn back on. Clothes would be passed down from the eldest child to the younger ones.”

8. Upcycling was *officially* born in the 1990s:

The first mention of the term upcycling is found in a 1994 interview with mechanical engineer Reiner Pilz who explains: "I call recycling down-cycling. What we need is up-cycling, thanks to which old products are given a higher, not a lower, value."