Circular textiles and the fast fashion they compete with
The textile and apparel industries, fashion retail and fast fashion appear on dozens of recent papers across the AI, management and operations research journals, and 18 of them carry a circular, recycling, waste or resale keyword. The EU will require separate textile collection and producer responsibility. Can collection, sorting and recycling be made to pay, and does resale cut new production?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 87 papers carry a textile, apparel, fashion, garment or clothing keyword (32 in AI journals, 30 in management, 11 in economics, 11 in operations research): "textile industry" on 12, "fashion retail" on 8, "apparel industry" on 7, "fast fashion" on 5. Eighteen of the 87 also carry a circular, recycling, waste, sustainability, secondhand, resale, rental or fast-fashion keyword.
Questions
- At current prices for recycled fibres, which sorting and recycling technologies cover their costs, and how large must collection volumes be?
- Does secondhand resale reduce purchases of new clothing, or add to total consumption?
- Who pays under producer responsibility fees, and do fees change what fast fashion firms design?
Data that could help
Textile collection and sorting data from the countries that already collect separately, resale platform sales, apparel import volumes and producer responsibility fee schedules.
Next step
Build a cost model of a textile sorting and recycling chain from published plant data and compute the collection volume needed to break even at 2025 fibre prices.