Have you ever wondered what happens to a garment once it is no longer needed? For consumers, the journey may seem straightforward. A shirt is put into a bag, the bag is discarded, and eventually it is out of sight and out of mind. But for the textile itself, the story is far from over. Where it ends up next (whether reused, resold, recycled or sent to landfill) says a great deal about how effectively we manage textile waste. For the textile, fashion and recycling industries, this is an increasingly important question. And if we are honest, in most parts of the world, we are still a long way from managing discarded textiles as valuable resources. 

The UN Environment Programme estimates that the world generated around 2.1 billion tonnes of municipal waste in 2023, and that figure is on course to nearly double by the middle of the century. Textiles are only a part of that, but they tell the story better than almost anything else. Over 120 million tonnes of clothing are discarded globally every year, and well under 1% of it is turned back into new fibre. Here in the UAE, we discard roughly 220,000 tonnes of textiles a year, and the lion's share, over 88%, goes to landfill or gets incinerated. 
To me, those numbers say less about waste than they do about value, and how easily we let it slip through our fingers.

Think about what goes into a single cotton sheet before it ever reaches a hotel room: the water to grow the cotton, the energy to spin and dye it, and the hands that weave and finish it. When that sheet is sent to landfill, all of that is buried with it. When it is incinerated, its value quite literally goes up in smoke. Either way, the next sheet has to be made from scratch, drawing on the same resources all over again. We call that 'disposal', but isn’t it really just an expensive way of going back to square one?

Look at it the other way round and the picture changes completely. According to Boston Consulting Group, with better collection, sorting and technology, textile recycling could rise above 30% and produce new fibre worth more than $50 billion. And that is before we even count reuse, which is usually where the highest value lies.  

Right now, we are realising very little of that potential. At the launch of Naseej, the UAE's national textile circularity initiative, the Minister of Economy said textile waste should be seen as an economic opportunity rather than a disposal problem. I couldn't agree more. For far too long, we have treated textile waste as a cost to be managed rather than a resource with real worth. That is why it is so encouraging to see that shift in thinking, from getting rid of something to getting something out of it. That is where real change begins. 

But none of that value can be reached if the material never makes it back to the system. This is the part I think gets overlooked the most. Collection sounds like the least glamorous step in the chain, and in a way it is, but everything else hangs by that thread. UNEP estimates that 2.7 billion people still have no access to even basic waste collection, let alone separate collection for textiles. And even where waste is collected regularly, it is important to understand that what we put in the bins decides what can be recovered. Tadweer's chief executive has pointed out that textiles mixed with food waste or cardboard become contaminated and simply cannot be recycled. This means that a towel set aside on its own still has options. The same towel buried under a day's kitchen waste has very few left. A stitch in time, as they say, really does save nine.

Once material is collected, the real work begins, and the devil is very much in the detail. The next step is sorting, where the waste finally starts to gain back its value. A mixed bale of unknown textiles is worth very little to anyone. However, the same bale, once it has been graded by condition and fibre, becomes something a buyer actually wants. One person's discarded linen becomes another's raw material. That is essentially the gap we set out to close at Dr. Linen, making sure what we collect ends up as feedstock someone can use, rather than one more thing counted and forgotten.

This is also why I see post-consumer waste as an opportunity to drive sustainability, rather than simply a problem to manage. Keeping products in use means fewer new ones need to be made. And every tonne of material diverted from landfill supports a wider green economy, from collection and sorting to material trading, recycling and the jobs that come with it. Here in the UAE, the direction is becoming increasingly clear. Abu Dhabi is working towards diverting 80% of its waste from landfill by 2031, while Dubai is aiming for complete diversion by 2041. In Europe, producers will soon have to cover the cost of collecting and recycling the textiles they sell. The shift is already underway.

What gives me hope is that much of the region's infrastructure is still being built. That gives us a real opportunity to build separation, sorting and traceability into the system from the start, rather than trying to fix things later. To me, waste is simply material for which we haven't built the right system yet. The question is whether we choose to build it.

 Narayanan Raghavan is the Founder & Chief Sustainability Officer of Dr. Linen. Dr. Linen's Weave 360 has partnered with hotels, hospitals, schools, airlines, and industries to collect, sort, and recycle textile waste that is otherwise intended for landfills.