Bad data could derail global textile circularity, experts warn

The pile only looks simple until you try to name it

A mountain of used T-shirts, denim, poly-cotton hoodies, and grimy linings looks like inventory. In reality, it is a classification test, and the whole circular-fashion story depends on getting the answer right. UNEP and the Basel Convention say less than 1% of textiles are recycled into new clothing, while clothing production has doubled in the last 15 years. That is the backdrop for the real problem: if the sector cannot tell reusable from unwearable, product from waste, and exportable from controlled, the circular economy becomes a slogan with no operating system.

The scale alone is enough to make the stakes obvious. The European textile and clothing sector generated about €170 billion in turnover in 2023, employed roughly 1.3 million people, and included about 197,000 companies. This is not a niche cleanup project; it is a major industrial base, with real jobs, real trade flows, and real regulatory exposure. When the data underneath that system is fuzzy, the consequences do not stay in a spreadsheet. They land in sorting rooms, customs paperwork, producer fees, and recycling contracts.

Where the first mistake happens: sorting

Circularity begins with a knife-edge judgment. A sorter has to decide whether a garment is resale-ready, repairable, downcyclable, or straight waste. If the underlying data is unreliable, the whole chain gets warped. You get used textiles coded as “goods” when they should be treated as waste, or waste streams dressed up as reuse flows because the label is more convenient than the truth.

That matters because textiles are messy by nature. A single garment can carry mixed fibers, trims, coatings, and contamination that make it easy to misread and hard to recycle. The cleaner the feedstock, the better the chance of textile-to-textile recycling. The dirtier the data, the more valuable material leaks into lower-grade routes, and the more brands end up claiming circularity on the front end while the back end still looks like a landfill with better branding.

Digital product passports are supposed to help with exactly this problem. But the promise only holds if the sector actually knows what it is tracking. A January 2026 Ecotextile News report warned that passports could miss their potential unless policymakers prioritize data needs and confront the low levels of digitization running through the value chain. That is the point nobody in glossy sustainability decks likes to say out loud: a passport is only useful if the identity document is accurate.

Exports are where bad labels become policy trouble

The trade side is where the story gets sharpest. At Basel Convention COP-17 in 2025, parties added used textiles and textile waste as a new work item, and the Secretariat was told to gather comments and prepare a report for OEWG-15. The reason is simple: once a shipment is treated as controlled waste, it falls under prior informed consent from exporting, transit, and importing countries. That changes the paperwork, the timing, the cost, and the route.

This is not abstract. In 2024, the top exporters of used clothing were the United States at about $853 million, China at $652 million, and the United Kingdom at $520 million. The biggest importers included Pakistan at $295 million, the United Arab Emirates at $270 million, and Kenya at $210 million. Those are not tiny side markets. They are the spine of a global secondhand system that keeps clothes moving, resold, sorted, repaired, and, in too many cases, dumped when the wrong pieces arrive in the wrong place.

If policymakers use bad data to push too much material into the “waste” bucket, trade routes will tighten, compliance costs will climb, and legitimate reuse networks will get hit alongside the bad actors. If they swing too far the other way and let waste move as if it were reusable stock, the result is contamination, noncompliance, and a race to the bottom that cheapens the whole market. Either way, classification is not a technical detail. It is the switch that controls the flow.

EPR will either clean up the mess or price it in

The European Union has just made the issue harder to ignore. The revised Waste Framework Directive entered into force on 16 October 2025 and sets common rules for extended producer responsibility for textiles. The European Commission says the law is meant to reduce waste, mitigate environmental damage, and improve economic security and resilience by driving innovation and reducing raw-material dependence. That is a serious mandate, and it only works if the numbers behind it are solid.

EPR lives or dies on data quality. If a brand’s textile volumes are misclassified, fees are mispriced. If reusable items are counted as waste, the system punishes the wrong products. If waste is counted as reusable stock, the fee base shrinks and the cleanup burden gets shoved onto someone else. That is why industry groups have been pushing for clearer implementation details and a lower compliance burden, including a single EU EPR register. They are not just asking for convenience. They are asking for a system that can actually be administered without drowning everyone in inconsistent inputs.

And this is where the fashion crowd should pay attention. EPR is not some dull back-office tax debate. It will shape what kinds of fabrics get favored, which suppliers can document their output, and which brands can prove they are not just moving the problem around. If the registry is messy, the market will reward the most slippery actors, not the most responsible ones.

What better data has to do, practically

The European Environment Agency says innovation, including digitalisation, can boost competitiveness in the textiles value chain. That is the optimistic version. The cautionary version is that bad data turns every promising tool into a dud. A digital product passport, a recycling claim, a cross-border shipment, or an EPR fee all depend on the same thing: a shared, trusted record of what a textile actually is and where it is allowed to go.

There are three decisions that have to get cleaner fast:

• Sorting has to be based on consistent definitions of reusable, repairable, and waste material, not whichever label keeps the pallet moving.

• Exports have to be classified with traceability that reflects reality, because a used garment that crosses a border as a “good” but behaves like waste can poison both trade and trust.

• EPR systems have to be built on registries and reporting rules that brands and suppliers can actually follow, or the fees will be gamed and the incentives will miss the mark.

The broader global picture is blunt. USITC says less than 1% of unwearable clothing worldwide is recycled into textile inputs for new clothing. It also cites an estimate that about 20% of EU clothing waste could be recycled into new apparel by 2030, cutting carbon emissions by about 4 million tons. UNECE and ECLAC say only 1% is recycled into higher-value outputs such as new clothing, while much of what is collected is exported. That means the room for improvement is real, but only if the sector can stop confusing volume with value and movement with circularity.

The fashion industry loves the clean visual of a closed loop. What it has, right now, is a classification problem wearing a sustainability badge. Until the sector can measure textiles honestly, circularity will keep breaking at the exact points that matter most: sorting, exports, waste labeling, and the rules meant to make producers pay for what they put into the world.