Fashion industry: 200 football stadiums full of clothing waste – we throw that much away

Around 120 million tons of clothing end up in the trash every year. That is enough to fill more than 200 football stadiums up to the top, the management consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG) writes in a new analysis of the textile industry.

A large part of the thrown away clothing was hardly used: on average, buyers only wear a piece of clothing seven to ten times before throwing it away.

80 percent of the clothing waste then landed on landfills or are burned directly. 12 percent are reused. And only one percent of the clothing waste is recycled to new fibers. Many items of clothing still consist of mixed fabrics that can hardly be separated and recycled using today’s methods.

Clothing drops a billion industry

The negligible recycling rate is on the one hand a huge ecological problem, says BCG. Because more than 90 percent of CO2 emissions in the fashion industry were in the extraction and processing of new raw materials. On the other hand, it is also a business dilemma for the industry, because the material value of the clothing waste is an estimated $ 150 billion (129.3 billion euros) annually.

The establishment of a circular economy in the textile industry is therefore not a future vision, but a requirement of ecological and economic reason, according to BCG. It does not require single initiatives, but industry -wide solutions to make recycled materials more easily available for manufacturers and consumers. BCG, for example, gives examples of simplified return systems, new sorting technologies or chemical recycling in order to better process mixed tissue.

Mountains of garbage to see from space

If it continues, the annual garbage mountain could grow to more than 150 million tons by 2030. That would be enough to fill 260 football stadiums. According to BCG, clothing mountains are already so high in northern Chile’s mountains that they can be recognized from space themselves.