Two recent reports—Debrand’s FY2025 Transparency Report and How Markets Meet Consumer Demand: Secondhand Clothing in El Salvador—are highlighting a reality often overlooked in conversations around textile recycling: a large-scale global reuse and recovery infrastructure for used clothing already exists and has been operating for decades.
Together, the reports suggest the textile recovery industry is far more mature and operational than many consumers, policymakers and brands may realize, even as newer textile-to-textile recycling technologies continue to gain attention and investment.
“I hear a lot that ‘there’s no system; there’s no infrastructure’ for handling used textiles,” said Marisa Adler, an independent consultant for MKA Consulting, LLC. “This is untrue. The system has been quietly operating under the radar and out of public realm for a century.”
In fact, Adler noted there is currently a disconnect between the operators already managing used textiles and the growing number of brands, policymakers and investors now searching for circularity solutions.
“We need to bridge the gap between operators in this industry—collectors, thrift, sorters, graders, brokers, reclaimed wiping cloth manufacturers, recyclers—who are shouting ‘we are here, we’re already here!’ and the brands, retailers, policymakers, investors and innovators who are looking for solutions,” she said.
The Debrand report, released by the Vancouver-based textiles reverse logistics company, details the realities of today’s textile recovery system and the limitations facing advanced textile recycling infrastructure. While textile-to-textile recycling technologies continue to attract headlines and funding, the report found that traditional fiber reclamation remains the dominant recovery pathway.
“The shift from a linear to a circular textile economy is one of the largest value-creation opportunities of our time, but only if it’s underpinned by credible data,” said Amelia Eleiter, CEO and co-founder of Debrand. “As traceability expectations accelerate, transparency
is becoming a key driver of progress—enabling stronger alignment, deeper trust, and more confident investment across the value chain. We’re optimistic that continued collaboration and data integrity will help unlock the full potential of textile circularity.”
Of the more than 2.5 million pounds Debrand diverted from landfills during FY2025, 56.13% went to fiber reclamation, while advanced recycling accounted for just 1.06%.
Adler noted those numbers reflect where the industry truly stands today.
“Fiber reclamation and shoddy production have been around for a long time and they’re an important part of the circular value chain,” she said. “So is the reclaimed wiping cloth industry. Silent but hugely important.”
At the same time, she noted that existing reuse and open-loop recycling systems cannot solve every textile waste challenge on their own.
“There will always be a fraction of used textiles that are unsuitable for reuse, repurposing and mechanical recycling, or where volumes exceed market demand,” Adler said. “This is where textile-to-textile recycling comes in.”
The Debrand report notes that despite major investments and public announcements from advanced recycling companies, projected future capacity still represents only a small fraction of global fiber production, which reached approximately 132 million metric tons in 2024.
Adler noted significant barriers remain before textile-to-textile recycling can scale commercially.
“Textile-to-textile recycling is in its infancy still and we need a host of unlocks to realize its potential,” she said. “That includes capital to build the infrastructure, incentives to enable supply chain sorting and preprocessing facilities and end market development, and benchmarks and standards for facilitating the market.”
The second report, put together by a joint venture between Full Cycle Resource Consulting and Garson & Shaw, shifts attention to international secondhand clothing markets, another critical and often controversial part of the textile recovery system.
The report noted that secondhand apparel imports are frequently misunderstood as waste dumping operations when they are actually an important economic and social system that provides affordable clothing access while supporting jobs and reuse markets.
“International markets play a crucial role in the circular textile ecosystem that I fear has been overshadowed by headlines about ‘waste dumping,’” Adler said.
She described the secondhand trade as a long-standing commodity market that supports employment, economic activity and textile recovery infrastructure around the world.
“The secondhand textiles trade is a legitimate long-standing commodity trade that employs millions, provides access to affordable apparel, supports GDPs of importing countries, creates business opportunities across the recovery value chain, extends product use, offsets demand for cheap new-apparel imports and supports original collection charities,” Adler said.
Jessica Franken, vice president of government and external affairs for the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, said policymakers must recognize that reuse infrastructure is already functioning at scale.
“The global secondhand clothing and textile reuse system already represents the largest and most established form of textile circularity in existence, supporting millions of jobs in the global North and South, and diverting enormous volumes of material from landfill every year,” Franken said.
She added that reuse remains higher on the waste hierarchy than recycling because it extends a product’s life with limited additional processing.
“While textile-to-textile recycling technologies are promising and will likely play an important future role, most are still developing and do not yet operate at the scale needed to manage global textile volumes on their own,” she said. “Policymakers should therefore be careful not to design EPR systems in ways that unintentionally undermine the existing reuse infrastructure that is already functioning today.”
Adler also pushed back against public perceptions surrounding exported textile waste, arguing that the majority of textile waste generated in the U.S. never enters reuse systems at all.
“The media has unfairly portrayed the secondhand clothing trade as waste dumping,” she said. “In reality, a far greater volume of textiles are landfilled domestically.”
Approximately 85% of textiles and apparel generated as waste in the U.S. are sent directly to landfills and incinerators, while only 15% are diverted from disposal streams.
“Of the volumes exported, the vast majority is ultimately reused, repurposed or recycled in international end markets,” Adler said. “Only a very small fraction winds up as true waste.”
As brands continue to increase circularity commitments and policymakers push for stronger textile recovery systems, Adler noted the industry must focus not only on emerging technologies but also on strengthening and improving the infrastructure that already exists.
“We need to make sure that policy incentivizes less consumption, better products and responsible transparent end-of-life management,” she said. “To me this means designing equitable recovery systems that leverage already-built infrastructure, logistics and labor, while also promoting the development of true end-of-life solutions like textile-to-textile recycling.”
