Prague – About 15 percent of the textiles that people throw away in the Czech Republic are reused or recycled. Andrea Veselá, an analyst at the Institute of Circular Economy (INCIEN), told ČTK. According to her, the export of used textiles is constantly growing. Starting next year, domestic municipalities will be obliged to sort textile waste. Companies involved in the collection and sorting of old clothing expect the amount of textiles that will not find use to grow. According to Veselá, there are now approximately 10,000 containers for collecting textiles from private or non-profit companies in the Czech Republic.
According to information from the Ministry of the Environment, approximately 180,000 tons of textiles are thrown away in the Czech Republic annually, which makes up three to four percent of the waste in black bins for mixed waste. “Textiles thrown into municipal waste are either incinerated or landfilled. Clothing from textile containers is sorted by various entities and then either resold in the Czech Republic, exported for sale outside the Czech Republic, recycled or rather downcycled (disposable) into new products. A smaller unusable part she is fired,” said Veselá.
Lenka Harcubová from the Prague company Potex mentioned that the best way to sort textile waste is for people to put their clothes in the textile containers in plastic bags. “Unfortunately, a large part of people dump loose clothing, which we understand. However, it complicates the further loading and sorting of textiles,” she said.
Things other than clothes also appear in textile waste containers, said Andrea Strnadová from the company Dimatex, which is based in Stráž nad Nisou in Liberec. A small portion of the clothing is actually sorted for further wear, she said. According to Strnadová, approximately five to 20 percent of sorted clothing is still so-called fashionable – and can be sold for its original purpose.
The obligation to sort textile waste in municipalities will apply from 2025 and will be at municipal expense. This obligation will be introduced in all EU member states. In the following years, the Ministry of the Environment plans to introduce a small fee when purchasing clothing, which will cover the associated costs.
However, for example, according to Dimatex, because of this, there will be a huge amount of very low-quality textiles on the market, for which there will be no application. Harcubová believes that the new legislation will have a huge impact, but its effects cannot yet be said with certainty. He is of the opinion that the amount of waste collected will increase. Veselá sees mandatory collection as a step in the right direction. “For example, it will motivate consumers more to throw away textiles in the container that is directly on top of them, rather than in municipal waste,” said the analyst.
Annually according to that produces 12.6 million tons of textile waste in the EU, of which five million tons are clothing textiles. That’s an average of 12 kilograms of clothing per person per year, which ends up in textile or municipal containers. According to Veselá, the average EU citizen buys almost 26 kilograms of textiles per year, the vast majority of these purchases being new clothes.
CR textile waste
Source: www.ceskenoviny.cz
