The Automatic-sorting for Circularity in Textiles project (ACT UK) is a two-year pilot project (2023–2025) focused on developing solutions and designing infrastructure to manage the UK’s unwanted and unusable clothing and textiles.
The project is unlocking the potential of worn-out textiles through three key workstreams:
- Textile collections and logistics
- Technology development
- Circular textiles ecosystems
Under the ‘Textile collections and logistics’ workstream, a series of textile collection trials, led by Reskinned, were run in the UK between February and November 2024. The trials assessed whether the UK public could differentiate between reusable and worn-out textiles when clearing out their wardrobes. The objective was to establish if there could be a direct feedstock stream from households to an Advanced Textile Sorting and Preprocessing facility (ATSP).
A variety of collection methods were tested, from postal donations and in-store takeback schemes to car park clothing banks —each exploring different ways to communicate instructions to the public.
The trials were run by Marks & Spencer x Oxfam, Tesco x Salvation Army Trading Company Limited (SATCoL), Reskinned, Textile Recycling International (TRI) x Kirklees Council, Dunelm x SATCoL, and Crisis, the homelessness charity. The results from the trials were then analysed by WRAP.
Key findings
- The public response to the trials, captured through surveys and other feedback loops, was overwhelmingly positive. Partakers were strongly motivated by an environmental rationale.
- For the most part, the public struggled to separate out, and differentiate between, reusable and non-reusable items to the standard required for direct supply to an ATSP, without professional manual intervention in-between. However, across trials, there were positive signs that accuracy could be improved through, for example, standardisation in messaging, clear instructions at the point of sorting in-home, and prolonged communication activities.
- Across most trials, there was an increase in the volume of textiles collected – in some cases up to 46% more.
- In order to justify the expenditure of improving the effectiveness of collections, brands need to signal a clear market demand for recycled content.