A new initiative to close the feedstock supply gap blocking post-consumer textiles from entering textile-to-textile recycling at scale has launched in Europe, targeting what the organisers have identified as one of the most structurally urgent problems in textile circularity. Fashion for Good's Project Feedstock Activation Europe (FAE) has brought together brands, sorters and recyclers to turn non-rewearable waste into a competitively priced, usable raw material for recyclers.
- Non-rewearable post-consumer textiles are currently downcycled, landfilled or incinerated, with only a small fraction entering textile-to-textile recycling across Europe.
- Secondhand export markets, which historically absorbed significant volumes, are contracting due to declining material quality, tightening trade restrictions and weak demand in destination countries.
- Upstream feedstock systems have not yet proven capable of supplying recyclers at the cost and quality required, Fashion for Good stated in its April 2026 project announcement.
- Adidas as lead sponsor, alongside Bestseller and Inditex, has backed the project, with strategic partner Rehubs and on-ground assistance from Rematters also involved.
THE INITIATIVE: Amsterdam-based Fashion for Good has launched Project FAE to address the structural gap that has left post-consumer textile waste with few viable routes into closed-loop recycling. Regulatory pressure is adding to that urgency: EU Extended Producer Responsibility legislation will require brands to take financial responsibility for their products at end of life, making functional recycling pathways a commercial necessity.
- Brand partners backing the project are Adidas, which serves as lead sponsor, alongside Bestseller and Inditex; Fashion for Good's broader corporate partner network includes Laudes Foundation, co-founder William McDonough and firms including Arvind Limited, Birla Cellulose, C&A, Chanel, Levi Strauss & Co., Norrøna, ON, Otto Group, Paradise Textiles, PDS Limited, PVH Corp., Ralph Lauren, Reformation, Shahi Exports, Target, Teijin Frontier and Zalando.
- Sorters advising the project include Boer Group, Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, Erdotex, Formació i Treball, Humana People to People, Kringwinkel Antwerpen, New Retex, Nouvelles Fibres Textiles, Plaxtil-Essaimons, Sympany, Texaid and Texlimca.
- Recyclers span mechanical, thermomechanical and chemical technologies, including Circ, Circulose, CuRe Technology, eeden, Infinited Fiber Company, Kipas (fibR-e), Matterr, Meltem Kimya, Recover, Reju, OnceMore from Södra and WornAgain.
- Ecosystem partners include InvestNL, Landbell Group, Refashion, Reverse Resources, TEXroad, Wargon Innovation, WRAP, ZDHC and Global Fashion Agenda.
THE CORE PROBLEM:Post-consumer textiles are heterogeneous and costly to process, and recyclers maintain stringent input specifications that vary across technologies, leaving sorters unable to sell large sections of collected waste to recyclers at viable prices. Neither side can close the gap alone: sorters cannot prepare material at the price, quantity and quality recyclers require, while recyclers cannot absorb the cost of doing it themselves, driving continued dependence on post-industrial waste.
- Post-industrial waste remains dominant as a recycling feedstock because it is cleaner, more consistent and easier to process than post-consumer material collected from end-of-life garments.
- High collection and processing costs for recyclable fractions, combined with recyclers' demand for competitively priced feedstock, have created a commercial impasse that neither sorters nor recyclers can resolve independently.
- Demand for recycled fibres is growing and regulatory pressure is increasing, making the integration of post-consumer feedstock into textile-to-textile recycling a matter of when, not if, according to the source.
- Without sufficient recycling or reuse infrastructure to handle excess volumes in destination countries, non-rewearable stock accumulating in those markets most often ends up landfilled.
THE FRAMEWORK: Project FAE works across two parallel tracks to produce a practical and commercial framework the wider industry can act on. The first targets feedstock preparation through advanced pre-processing technologies, including fibre blend separation, elastane removal and contaminant extraction, assessing their technological and commercial feasibility. The second develops a regional hub framework for largescale sorting and pre-processing facilities that aggregate post-consumer textile volumes across Europe.
- Advanced pre-processing assessments will identify which technologies are ready to deploy and which still require further development before commercial adoption.
- Regional hubs will apply automated sorting and mechanical pre-processing to produce feedstock streams tailored to the differing specifications of individual recyclers across mechanical, thermomechanical and chemical technologies.
- Building at scale and leveraging centralised automation aims to reduce per-unit processing costs, improve feedstock quality and create a more viable business case for both sorters and recyclers.
- The hub model is designed to make sorting and pre-processing commercially self-sustaining, creating a replicable template that other operators across Europe could adopt.
- The project's ambition is to support real implementation in the coming years as part of broader efforts to build a viable post-consumer waste value chain in Europe.
WHAT THEY SAID
We have been talking about textile circularity for years, and the honest truth is that the technology is no longer the bottleneck. What is holding us back is much more unglamorous: the sorting lines, the pre-processing steps, the supply systems that need to exist before a single fibre can be recycled. Project FAE is our attempt to tackle that unglamorous, necessary work head-on—together with the brands, sorters and recyclers who know this problem better than anyone. If we get this right, we unlock something the industry has been trying to reach for a long time.
— Katrin Ley
Managing Director
Fashion for Good
Circularity will not be achieved through product innovation alone. The bigger and more urgent work is building the infrastructure that does not yet exist at the scale we need: sorting, pre-processing, and supply systems that enable post-consumer textile waste to move toward closed-loop recycling. This is not a challenge any single organisation can solve. Project FAE brings together the brands, sorters, and recyclers willing to work together to realize this pathway in the EU, and we are proud to be part of that work.
— Gudrun Messias
Director, Sustainability Direction
Adidas AG
