Against the backdrop of one of the industry’s leading sustainability showcases, a private breakfast session at the Future Fabrics Expo in London brought together stakeholders from across the textile value chain to tackle a pressing question: What’s holding textile recycling back – and how can we move forward?
Titled “Yesterday’s garments, today’s raw materials – what’s holding us back?”, the event offered a rare forum for cross-sector exchange, with over 50 guests from fashion brands, certification bodies, retailers, and media.
Moderated by RE&UP’s Senior PR & Marketing Manager Keith O’Brien, the panel featured insights from Nienke Steen (Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute) and Priyanka Khanna (Fashion for Good), who addressed the technical and systemic challenges preventing textile-to-textile recycling from reaching scale.
Key themes included:
- Barriers to infrastructure and investment
- The role of certification and standardization
- New models of collaboration accelerating change
The event underscored the need for open, cross-sector action to overcome barriers to circularity and move scalable textile-to-textile recycling from ambition to reality.“Yesterday’s garments are already today’s raw materials. There are still challenges, but we’re operating at scale – and with the right partners, we’ll continue to do better,” said RE&UP General Manager Andreas Dorner.
