Textiles

Ongoing projects

Partnership for Circular Textiles - ReYarn

ReYarn is an initiative that brings together strong expertise in textile sorting, local reuse, mechanical recycling, …

Automatic sorting of textile waste

SOEX and the City of Copenhagen have partnered up to develop knowledge about mechanical sorting of post-consumer …

Partnership for dehumidifacation of textile waste

New partnership will investigate how to dehumidificate textile waste.

Post-consumer textile waste in Copenhagen

The Danish consumption of clothing, footwear, and other textiles is increasing. At present textile manufacturing is a burden on both the environment and climate, and it is crucial that a larger share of the Copenhageners’ textiles are reused and recycled. Currently textiles (both reusable and recyclable textiles) are collected from the recycling stations. In addition, charities and other private textile actors run a parallel collection scheme, certain bring points located around the city.

A major part of the collected quantities is sold or exported, but still, every year approx. 6,000 tonnes of household textiles end in the residual waste for incineration. Following the City of Copenhagen’s waste and resource management plan 2024 and the national Climate plan for a greener waste sector and Circular economy, the City of Copenhagen is currently in the process of planning an upcoming household collection scheme for textile waste. The overall ambition is to collect and recycle 2.000 tons by 2024 (1.000 tonnes by 2023).

Studies show that 60% of the incinerated textiles are reusesable e.g., wearable clothing, shoes etc. Almost 30% of the textiles can be reprocessed into new raw materials, such as nonwovens, for example, felt, furniture filling, heat/sound insulation and in a smaller scale, into new textile yarns (fibers) and flatware.

Please contact us if you want more information or wish to help us make textiles circular.

Project report from ReYarn partnership released

Post-consumer recyclable textiles (non-wearables)

Results from automatic sorting of recyclable textiles

SOEX Recycling has completed two comprehensive batch sorting tests of post-consumer, textile waste collected from the Greater Copenhagen area.

ReYarn stand at LOOP Forum 2022 Photo: Tina Winberg

Textile-to-textile recycling at LOOP Forum 2022

Partnership for circular mattresses

A group of stakeholders across the Danish waste sector and the mattress industry have initiated a collaboration to find circular solutions for discarded mattresses.

Photo: Ursula Bach

Improve collection schemes

Copenhagen test sorting facility

New sorting technologies

AI, image recognition, robot, and marker technologies