Clothes as waste
| Instead of repairing used clothes, handing them down to younger children or donating them, lots of clothes are simply being thrown away when people don’t find any use for them anymore. Since 1996, the amount of clothes bought in the EU per person has increased by 40% following a sharp fall in prices, which has reduced the life span of clothing. Europeans use nearly 26 kilos of textiles and discard about 11 kilos of them every year. Used clothes can be exported outside the EU, but are mostly (87%) incinerated or landfilled. Globally less than 1% of clothes are recycled as clothing, partly due to inadequate technology. |
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