Textile Circularity: Built On Unseen Labour, Stuck At Invisible Markets

The goal is to change this unidirectional fast fashion fuelled landfill-bound flow to a more circular one. A closed-loop textile industry. In theory, sustainability is avoiding the landfill and continuously processing waste textiles back into the production cycle ad infinitum. In reality, it means slower, wider circles, giving clothes a second life as upholstery, insulation, or something else like construction material. 

India, with its large domestic manufacturing base, consumer population, and access to global discarded textiles, has all three routes to source material: Pre-consumer waste from domestic manufacturing, post-consumer waste from Indian households, and imported waste from abroad. 

But getting the waste is just step one. Without labour to process it and markets to absorb the output, circularity stalls.

Labour Behind The Loop

Recycling is underpinned by sorting and segregation. Each garment must be sorted and separated into its basic components before it can be recycled. 

“Pure polyester is easy to recycle, pure cotton is easy to recycle. When you mix both of them, that is when things start getting complicated,” Babulal Shiradana, Director of Get Plastic Recycling, a plastic waste management company, told The Secretariat.

Separating these blended fibres at scale is technologically complex and often economically unviable. This is a system that still relies on manual labour. All the buttons, hooks, and zippers that hold garments together need to be removed before the cloth can be recycled. 

“They’re small, but made out of different materials and so need to be separated. Buttons are plastic, hooks are metal. Their removal is all a manual process done by hand,” says Shiradana. 

The effect on workers is often invisible. They are underpaid, informal, and unprotected. Workers in textile recycling units are exposed to airborne cotton dust, which can cause chronic respiratory illnesses. 

Some plants have begun installing cyclones or industrial dust collectors to manage air quality. But their adoption is uneven, and the health of workers remains largely unmonitored.

Textile dyeing factories, another step in making recycled yarn usable, see workers handling dangerous chemicals like sulphuric acid and industrial-strength bleach. Behind rainbow recycled yarn are thousands of workers inhaling hours of microscopic lung-choking fibres and fumes. 

Need For A Mark 

Despite the labour-intensive nature of textile recycling, there is no equivalent of RugMark or Fairtrade certifications for recycled fashion.

The RugMark label on carpets assures buyers that products are made without illegal child labour with regular inspections. In contrast, recycled textiles carry no such assurance about wages, nor about working conditions.

Even labels like “Made in India” do not imply safe or fair labour practices. “While some certification schemes exist for cotton, such as Kasturi Cotton, there are no such standards for the circular textile economy,” says Shiradana.

A dedicated mark for recycled textiles, specifically one that includes labour standards, could help steer sustainability-conscious consumers toward choices that are actually 'ethical'. After all, the point of circularity is not just to reuse waste, but to avoid creating new forms of harm in the process.

Market Not “Market-ing”

“India’s textile recycling market is projected to reach US$ 400 million in the coming years,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Bharat Tex 2025, India’s largest textile trade fair, in February earlier this year. 

But the people on the ground tell a more uneven story.

India may be producing a lot of textile waste, but that doesn't make it easily or economically recyclable. The market may be growing, but the margins for those doing the groundwork remain painfully thin.

Waste segregators and recyclers say they are incurring more costs than profits. “Getting the scraps has become expensive with multiple middlemen. Transport and rent add to the burden,” said a factory associate in Panipat, on condition of anonymity. 

Some of the material they receive is not usable or has to be separated further, which means the input costs keep rising, while demand for recycled products remains low. “It would be great if the insulation we make could be procured by the government for their projects,” he said. 

Even cheap labour can’t offset the economics of textile recycling. The costs of transporting, storing, and sorting waste often outweigh the returns, especially since demand is limited. 

“We haven’t got into textile recycling because there is no market,” said Shiradana. Despite government projections of growth, manufacturers are reluctant to scale without buyers.

For now, the domestic market remains small, with many consumers still associating recycled textiles with poor quality or second-hand use. 

(This is Part 2 of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here)