Recycling and reusing clothing presents unique challenges, as well as opportunities, according to industry experts during a textile sorting workshop at the 2026 Textile Recovery Summit in San Diego. Chief among the challenges is how much to automate the processes of sorting and grading the used clothes.
“Automation is definitely going to be needed going forward,” said Constanza Gómez, CEO and co-founder of Sortile, a technology company helping the textile industry better understand what blends of fibers are in fabrics.
In order for clothing reuse and recycling to scale up, she said, “you need to figure out where automation makes sense and where it doesn’t.”
Gómez gave the example of a pile of uniforms, in which processors don’t need to test every one if they are all the same.
Gómez and the other panelists underscored the scope of the challenge. They pointed to the most recent data from the US EPA that found about 17 million tons of textiles were made in 2018 nationally, with a textile recycling rate of 14.7% (2.5 million tons).
The 11.3 million tons of textiles sent to landfills in 2018 represented 7.7% of all material landfilled. But, according to estimates from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, about 95% of textiles can be recycled or reused. So there is room for the reuse and recycling industry to grow, the panelists said.
A shifting industry
Beth Forsberg, senior vice president and chief sustainability officer for Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona, said the process of clothing recycling begins with the key step of sorting, which is “a lot more complicated than what meets the eye.”
The clothing reuse and recycling industry has seen big shifts over the past half century or so, said Brian London, SMART president, the international trade association representing the for-profit textile reuse and recycling industry.
For example, in the years after World War II, used clothing was sorted in the US, and much of it found its way into roofing and insulation applications. But as volumes increased over time, the domestic industry was overwhelmed. Much of the sorting shifted to lower-wage countries, particularly in South Asia and Central America. Markets also became increasingly international.
“People think if you give clothing to Goodwill it is going to be given to people who need clothing down the street,” London said. “But it got more complicated than that.” He added that “used clothing is unique. It can’t easily be automated.”
Some of the challenges include sorting by condition as well as for styles and for the right climate, the latter of which are factors that vary widely by region and culture. “Machines can’t capture that well,” London said.
Daniya Haji, president of Paragon Textiles, a Los Angeles-based textile recycling and secondhand apparel company operating Samiyatex and LA Vintage, said her firm’s job is to receive mixed textiles and sort them. “We want to make sure that every piece finds a home,” she said.
The first priority, said Haji, is to divert the garments to reuse, first locally, then internationally. An estimated 70% of the world wears used clothing, London noted. Next, items are selected for upcycling into something else, such as wiping rags for the automotive, mining, and hospitality industries. Finally, they are sent for recycling. “We send broken cashmere to Italy, where it gets reused to make new cashmere,” Haji said. Other items can be sent to chemical recyclers, which break down the fibers into their chemical building blocks for reuse.
Automated sorting
Two panelists represented emerging technologies that can help automate sorting – Gómez of Sortile and Rebecca Geppert, partnerships director for Refiberd, a California-based startup working on software solutions to enable circularity within the textiles industry.
Refiberd uses a hyperspectral, or infrared, camera and a proprietary algorithm to determine the fiber composition of a piece of clothing within 2% accuracy, said Geppert. Recyclers can use the device to speed up sorting operations versus relying on human eyes.
Sortile uses near-infrared (NIR) technology in a tabletop device to also determine the composition of clothing. Many customers use it for quality control at their facilities, said Gómez.
Geppert noted that her company is also working on a video-based technology to further aid sorting.
“Material composition for recycling is king,” said Geppert. “Many are blended textiles, so it’s really important to have technology that can identify the elements in that fabric. It helps streamline and standardize the process.”
The two companies’ technologies help plant operators identify impurities in the materials they are working with, which can gum up equipment and cause it to fail. “In an industry that is fighting tooth and nail with the cost of virgin materials that is really important,” said Gómez.
She noted that her company has seen that content labels on garments are inaccurate more than 40% of the time, often confounding recyclers. Plus, many garments are made of multiple materials.
Automated sorting isn’t perfect when it comes to these challenges, but it can play a role in improving facility efficiency, said the panelists. And rapid advances in artificial intelligence hold further promise for the near future.
“As the recycling industry becomes more robust, having a better sense of the data is going to become important,” said Geppert.
