WENZHOU, China– In a factory in Zhejiang province on China’s eastern coast, two piles of discarded cotton clothing and bedding, separated into light and dark colors, pile up on the floor of a work room. Jacket sleeves, collars and brand labels protrude from the piles as workers feed the garments into the shredding machines.
It’s the first stage of a new life for textiles, part of a recycling effort at Wenzhou Tiancheng Textile Company, one of China’s largest cotton recycling plants.
Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12% recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a fashion sustainability nonprofit. Even fewer (only 1%) waste clothing is recycled into new clothing; most are used for low-value items such as insulation or mattress padding.
Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of textiles, where more than 26 million tons of clothing are thrown away each year, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.
And factories like this are barely making a dent in a country whose textile industry is dominated by “fast fashion”: cheap clothing made from non-recyclable synthetic materials, not cotton. Produced from petrochemicals that contribute to climate change and air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70% of domestic clothing sales in China.
China’s footprint is global: Giant e-commerce brands Shein and Temu turn the country into one of the largest producers of cheap fashion in the world, with sales in more than 150 countries.
To make a revolutionary impact, what fashion expert Shaway Yeh calls “circular sustainability” is needed among major Chinese clothing brands to completely avoid waste.
“You have to start from recyclable fibers and then all these waste textiles will be reused,” he said.
But that’s a difficult goal to reach: Only about 20% of China’s textiles are recycled, according to the Chinese government, and almost all of it is cotton.
Chinese cotton is not exempt from its own stain, said Claudia Bennett of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation. Much of it comes from forced labor. in Xinjiang province by the country’s Uighur ethnic minority.
“One in five cotton garments worldwide is linked to Uyghur forced labor,” Bennett said.
In May, the United States blocked imports from 26 Chinese cotton merchants and warehouses to prevent products made with forced Uyghur labor. But because the supply chain is so incomplete, Uighur cotton is used in garments produced in other countries that do not carry the label “made in China”Bennet said.
“Many, many, many clothing brands are linked to Uyghur forced labor through cotton,” he said. “They hide behind the lack of transparency in the supply chain.”
While China is a world leader in the production of electric cars and electric public transportation and has set a goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, its efforts to promote fashion sustainability and textile recycling have taken a back seat. flat.
According to a report this year by the independent magazine Fashion Watchdog Remake When evaluating major clothing companies on their environmental, human rights and equity practices, there is little accountability among well-known brands.
The group awarded Shein, whose online marketplace brings together some 6,000 Chinese clothing factories under its brand, only 6 out of a possible 150 points. Temu scored zero.
Also scoring zero were American brand SKIMS, co-founded by Kim Kardashian, and low-priced brand Fashion Nova. American retailer Everlane scored the highest with 40 points, only half of which went to sustainability practices.
China’s internal politics do not help.
It is prohibited to use recycled cotton from used clothing to make new clothing within China. Initially, this rule was intended to crack down on Chinese overnight operations that recycle dirty or otherwise contaminated material.
But it now means that the huge spools of tightly woven, rope-like cotton thread produced at the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory from used clothing can only be sold for export, mainly to Europe.
To make matters worse, many Chinese consumers are unwilling to buy used items anyway, something Wenzhou factory sales director Kowen Tang attributes to rising household incomes.
“They want to buy new clothes, new things,” she said of the stigma associated with buying used clothing.
Still, among younger Chinese, a growing awareness of sustainability has contributed to the rise of nascent “remade” clothing businesses.
Thirty-year-old designer Da Bao founded Times Remake in 2019, a Shanghai-based brand that takes second-hand clothing and transforms them into new pieces. In the company’s workroom in Shanghai, tailors work with second-hand jeans and sweatshirts, sewing them to create new and original garments.
The company, which began when Da Bao and his father-in-law posted their unique designs online, now has a flagship store in Shanghai’s trendy Jing’an district that sells its remade garments along with vintage items such as Levi’s and Carhartt jackets. .
The designs are “a combination of past style and current fashion aesthetics to create something unique,” Bao said.
Zhang Na has a fashion brand, Reclothing Bank, which sells clothing, bags and other accessories made from materials such as plastic bottles, fishing nets and flour sacks.
The labels of the items have QR codes that show their composition, how they were made and the origin of the materials. Zhang relies on well-established production methods, such as textile fibers made from pineapple leaves, a centuries-old tradition originating in the Philippines.
“We can basically develop thousands of new fabrics and new materials,” he said.
Reclothing Bank began in 2010 to give “new life to old things,” Zhang said of his store in a historic Shanghai alley with a mix of Western and Chinese architecture. A large box for storing used clothes sat outside the entrance.
“Ancient objects actually convey a lot of people’s memories and emotions,” he said.
Zhang said he has seen awareness of sustainability grow since opening his store, with core customers in their 20s and 30s.
Bao Yang, a college student who stopped by the store during a visit to Shanghai, said she was surprised by the feel of the clothes.
“I think it’s surprising, because when I first walked in the door, I heard that many of the clothes were actually made from shells or corn (husks), but when I touched the clothes in detail, I had no idea that they would have This feeling is very comfortable,” he said.
Still, he admitted that buying sustainable clothing is a tough sell. “People my age are more addicted to fast fashion or don’t think about the sustainability of clothing,” she said.
Recycled clothing sold at stores like Reclothing Bank are priced much higher than fast fashion brands due to their expensive production methods.
And therein lies the real problem, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.
“Studies repeatedly show that consumers are not willing to pay more for clothing made from recycled materials and instead expect a lower price because they consider those clothes to be made from secondhand material,” he said.
With higher costs in sourcing, sorting and processing used clothing, he doesn’t think sustainable fashion will succeed on a large scale in China, where clothing is so cheap to make.
“Companies have no financial incentives,” he said.
For real change there needs to be “clearer signals from above,” he added, referring to government objectives such as those that boosted China’s electric vehicle industry.
Still, in China “the government can be a friend to any sector,” Lu said, so if China’s communist leaders see economic potential, it could trigger a policy change that drives new investment in a sustainable way.
But for now, the tightly rolled, plastic-wrapped cotton cones being loaded onto trucks outside the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory were all headed to overseas markets, far from where their recycling journey began.
“Fast fashion is definitely not out of fashion” in China, Lu said.
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Associated Press writer Isabella O’Malley in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP standards to work with philanthropic organizations, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas in AP.org.
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