Why are more clothes than ever being discarded?

The rise of second hand fashion app Vinted and people eager to find bargains has seen a rocketing rise in fashion sustainability - but one textile waste sorting centre said it has seen more garments than ever being discarded.

Some 15,500 tonnes of clothing came through the doors at SWD Clothing site in Bolton, Greater Manchester, last year.

The estimated 60 million clothes come in from charity shops and local authority textile bins across the region, but there are fears a growing amount cannot be recycled.

The reason is thought to be the rise of so-called fast fashion, the mass production and sale of low quality and cheaply-made clothing closely following the latest trends.

SWD Clothing said fast fashion is having a major impact on business because these garments are not designed to last as long as regular items and, by the same token, are not designed to be recycled.

So what happens to the clothes and what can we do to help promote better habits?

Many people imagine most old clothes being recycled in the same way we recycle plastic but SWD said it is not that simple. Clothes listed as "recycled polyester" in the shops are most likely made up of recycled plastic bottles rather than old clothing.

Peter Page, head of recycling and sustainability, said: "It's very difficult because clothing is not designed to be recycled. It's designed to be bought, to be worn and then to be thrown away."

He explained that for textile recycling you mostly rely on single fibre materials but the use of synthetic materials in most fast fashion items makes that difficult.

Workers grade the clothing by quality, category and colour and the clothes need to be clean and dry to get reused or recycled.

Mr Page said that 75 per cent of the clothing that comes through the centre can be reused and is sold to wholesalers across the world.

Clothes that get sent for recycling are also used for carpet underlay, noise insulation or wiping cloths for the oil and gas industry, while new ideas are always being explored.

Then, about three per cent of the clothes that are not fit for reuse or recycling are sent for incineration.

SWD is getting busier every year, Mr Page said, but the quality of the clothes coming in makes it harder for them to reuse.

Quite a lot. Among them, Valery Touchet started free classes to teach people how to sew and repurpose old clothes instead of throwing them out.

Ms Touchet said she had noticed the tradition of hand-me-down clothes she grew up with had changed to a culture of simply "buying and throwing".

"I just thought if I could educate people on how to reuse what they have already instead of buying new, that would help," she said.

The classes have brought together women from all different backgrounds, many who said they valued the "sisterhood" they had built as well as the new skills they have learned.

Meanwhile, the Manchester Fashion Movement is helping to educate people about sustainable fashion by going into schools, hosting panel talks and organising pop-up exhibitions and fashion shows with an educational message.

Alison Carlin said she wanted to "champion local northern talent" and send people away from her events "with knowledge they can go on to discuss".

Throwing clothes into household waste bins means they are likely to end up in landfill.

Disposing of clothes in a local authority textile bin located at recycling centres across the region or taking them to charity shops is the best way to prevent this.

However, Dr Patsy Perry, reader in fashion marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) acknowledged how hard it is to be sustainable amid the temptation to buy new clothes advertised more vividly than ever online.

"The best thing we can do is wear what we already own," she said.

"Don't buy new things if you are only going to wear them once, and there are other solutions like charity shopping or even luxury resellers to explore."

Ms Touchet agreed, adding: "Look through your wardrobe, there is always something [to recycle]."

"If you don't know how to go about it, that's where I come in, to help you refashion, reuse them and repurpose.

"If it was a dress before we can turn it into a blouse, or a top and a skirt."

A project by MMU has been collecting surplus clothing from across Greater Manchester, looking at whether the textiles are reusable, reusable but low quality, or non-reusable.

More than half the textiles in the sample were categorised as high-quality reusable, a small proportion were low quality but reusable, and less than a third were non reusable.

As part of the project, textiles that come through the Bolton sorting centre are being scanned to find out the material composition.

The hope is that the results will work out how many of the garments could be recycled into new textiles or other uses - in order to ensure fewer clothes go to waste.

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