Could you start by introducing yourself and your role at Textile Exchange, and give us a quick overview of what you'll be presenting at the Textiles Recycling Expo EU?

I lead Recycled Engagement at Textile Exchange, connecting recycled stakeholders with our work while also learning from the industry how Textile Exchange can better support the development of textile recycling.  

At the Expo I’ll be presenting initial findings from a joint research project conducted alongside Reverse Resources, Fashion For Good, and TexRoad. The project looked to quantify and model textile recycling capacity at a global level and the availability of feedstock for recycling. This research provides an overview of the current landscape, as well as a projection for 2030.  

Textile Exchange sits at a unique vantage point across the global industry, tracking standards, data, and market trends at scale. What does that view reveal about where the textile recycling sector genuinely stands right now? 

Undoubtably there is momentum within the sector. We speak with and visit recyclers globally who have tackled and addressed technical challenges and successfully implemented new technologies. We now need to build a system that supports this to embed and scale. But it will only succeed with the right collecting infrastructure in place, supported by a resilient supply chain and end customers who are committed to sourcing responsibly and willing to pay for it.  

Without giving too much away, what's the finding from this research that you think will land hardest with an industry audience? 

Modelling future capacity is always challenging. We’ve focused on building something that allows for updates to both data and assumptions. But the results show resoundingly that there is huge growth in terms of textile recycling capacity. However, as we have that wider industry perspective, it’s important to acknowledge this capacity is still far below total demand—and that demand for recycled fibre is only increasing.  

2030 is not far away, and the gap between current recycling capacity and where it needs to be is significant. How would you characterise the scale of the challenge and is the industry building at a realistic pace? 

We’re talking about a need for exponential growth on a global scale for recyclers, but also, just as importantly, the need for a system and infrastructure to support them. If there is demand and customers for materials, we know that recyclers are ready to go.  We can be certain that when an innovator has their first site operational, the second and third become easier to build and optimize.  

Feedstock availability is often cited as a critical bottleneck for scaling textile-to-textile recycling. From the data you've been working with, is this primarily a collection problem, a sorting problem, or something else? 

The availability of feedstock on a wide level doesn’t seem to be the primary challenge. The greater difficulty is ensuring that feedstock is in the right place, sorted, and prepared to fit the technology, while also being available at a cost that makes the system commercially viable. We know that most recyclers who are either operational or scaling will be focusing on pre-consumer waste initially. This is because it is easier to understand composition, supply, and quality. When considering post-consumer waste, this becomes far more complicated and regionally nuanced.

Textile Exchange works with brands, producers, and certifiers across many markets. How consistent is the ambition and action you're seeing globally? Where are the most significant regional gaps? 

Textile Exchange launched a new membership model in 2025, evolving our structure to a more action-oriented, impact-driven model with clearly defined pathways that help organizations respond to the climate and nature crisis. Specifically, within recycled materials, we’re setting a T2T target for 2030 and 2035. However, target setting is only the beginning. There are also challenges that require brands and Tier 4 to sit together and solve together. That’s where we see our work and value.  

Good data is only valuable if it drives decisions. How do you hope industry players use research like this, and what behaviour change would represent success for you? 

There is always a desire for a neat headline or statistic. The reality when quantifying capacity or feedstock is that these models require assumptions and projections. We’re confident that what we’re building is a robust model that allows for continuous improvement of accuracy. We know that building a factory takes many years and can face a number of setbacks, and there are a host of externalities that influence this. Our work is to provide a range of data to inform decision-making. We’ve shared this work with the EU Commission as they develop targets for ESPR. It’s important to base legislation on market data and statistics. We see this as an evolving project where we work collaboratively to improve data sources to ensure they remain useful to industry.  

Finally, what draws you to the Textiles Recycling Expo EU, and what do you see as the value of bringing this kind of data into a room full of the people who need to act on it? 

We attended the expo last year for its debut, and more recently attended the partner event in the US. Bringing together all the people who are working within the space, whether that’s collectors and sorters, recyclers, machinery producers, ecosystem partners, or downstream customers, is really the only way to solve these challenges. Brussels is at the heart of the legislative drive to increase textile recycling, making it a great location for such an event.