Europe’s Textile Waste Infrastructure in Crisis: Collection & Sorting Systems Teeter On Collapse, BCG Warns

A recent report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has cast a stark light on the struggles plaguing Europe's textile waste management ecosystem-with its core collection and sorting infrastructure now under "severe strain," as key operators shutter operations or file for bankruptcy, threatening to derail the continent's ambitions for a circular textile economy.

Titled "Textile Waste at a Tipping Point: Unlocking Europe's Circular Potential Amid System Breakdown," the report details a cascading crisis across major European markets. In France, social enterprise Le Relais-once a cornerstone of textile collection-halted all waste-gathering activities in mid-2025, even dumping unsorted textiles outside large retailers to protest chronic underfunding. The organization warned it would not survive the year without urgent financial support.

Smaller recyclers are vanishing quietly, while industry giants face collapse. In Germany, two of the country's largest textile collectors-SOEX and Texaid-filed for bankruptcy in October 2024 and June 2025, respectively, crippled by a collapsed export market and soaring sorting costs. The UK has seen similar upheaval: Textile Recycling International entered administration in early 2024, and the Textile Recycling Association (TRA) issued a dire warning: "The entire sector is at risk of collapse" as processing capacity vanishes and resale prices plummet.

At the heart of this breakdown lies a critical funding gap: the fees paid by environmental organizations and public authorities for each ton of textile waste collected fall far short of covering operational costs. This financial shortfall is compounded by three overlapping pressures:

• A saturated secondhand market, where demand for used textiles has stagnated amid the rise of ultra-fast fashion (which floods markets with low-cost, short-lived garments).
• Strict new export regulations, which have closed off traditional routes for surplus used textiles to developing markets.
• The low value of recycled textile outputs-currently, only 1% of Europe's textile waste is recycled into new textiles. Most ends up in low-grade uses (e.g., rags, insulation), converted into solid recovered fuel (SRF), landfilled, or incinerated.

The crisis comes as Europe pushes to reduce textile waste landfilling: under the EU's Landfill Directive, municipal landfill rates must drop below 10% by 2035-a target that has already spurred landfill taxes and product-specific bans across the bloc. BCG projects textile waste landfilling will fall from 26% of total waste in 2024 to 17% by 2035, but this progress hinges on fixing the broken collection and sorting system.

Reuse-long hailed as the most sustainable option for textile waste, via charity networks, resale platforms, and exports-also faces headwinds. The BCG report notes that ultra-fast fashion's dominance has flooded the market with low-quality garments that are hard to resell, while saturated export channels have left European recyclers with nowhere to offload surplus stock. Without urgent intervention-including increased public funding, policy incentives for high-value recycling, and collaboration between brands and waste operators-Europe's goal of a circular textile economy risks becoming unachievable.

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