Ever-growing consumerism and the fickleness of fashion are accelerating the volume of clothes that are thrown away. Helena Käppi, president of the textile recycling NGO Suomen Poistotekstiilit, says that leftover fabrics don't belong in the dump.
"It's a terrible waste of natural resources," she says. Käppi argues that a greater share of unwanted textiles should be re-used or recycled in fibre form.
There is no national system for collecting or sorting discarded clothes and rags. These efforts are so far carried out by a few non-governmental organisations, who end up with mountains of the stuff.
200 tonnes a year in Tampere
For instance the Finnish Red Cross’s logistics centre in Tampere alone processes some 200,000 kilos worth of donated clothes annually.
"Last year 13 percent of what we received had to be incinerated as no use was found for it. In some previous years the figure has been much higher," says Tanja Lumme-Lahti of the FRC.
She says the situation at the Tampere centre is much better than elsewhere, where old clothes go straight to the garbage dump. Beginning in 2016, this will be unlawful.
"Many groups that collect old clothes have a big problem in that clothes are donated in such bad condition. The year 2016 is not far off so there’s a bit of a rush to figure out how to somehow put these fabrics to use."
Coordinated national effort needed
There are only a few companies and organisations in Finland that use old textiles as raw material, with eco-fashion house Globe Hope the best known. Waste cloth is also used to make industrial towelling and oil-absorption mats.
"We have to get the government, the textile industry, clothing shops and waste handling companies involved in this effort,” says Käppi.
She says that burning old cloth as a source of energy is one option, but that it should not be an automatic solution.
"The first positive signal from the retail sector is that a large Swedish clothing chain has started accepting customer’s unusable, worn-out clothes,” she notes. "For consumers, recycling should be cheap and easy. Only then can we start effectively using unwanted textiles."