SHRED UP: A community-based solution for hard-to-reuse textile waste
At Stitched Up, we’re fed up with the state of textile reuse. Difficult to reuse and recycle textiles are most likely to fall out of the local waste stream and into landfill, be incinerated or exported with 29% of the UK’s textile waste in 2022 being exported and ~40% sent for end of life removing them from the local circular economy. We’ve been working on solutions to this problem for over a decade and in that time have identified many issues with the current textile waste system.
Current textile waste solutions are limited, inaccessible, and lack transparency.
We’ve been awarded funding from Greater Manchester Combined Authority‘s Foundational Economy Innovation Fund to start Shred Up, a community-based approach to textile waste.
We want to develop a community-driven crowdsourced research project into the uses and economic viability of shredded post consumer textile waste as a local textile waste solution. As part of our textile reuse programme we take in donated textiles however, we are only able to accept textiles with direct re-sale or re-use value which limits the economic viability and impact of the programme.
We want to work with local small businesses and organisations, especially those within the sustainable fashion industry to learn about the issues they are currently facing with textile waste and how our Shred Up programme could support their great work. If this is something that might be of interest to you – either as a creative, business owner etc.. who lacks options for textile recycling, might be interested in shredded textiles or are just concerned about textile waste in general, we’d love to hear from you so we can work on collaborative and local solutions together.
We’re planning on holding a number of community consultations and textile waste focused events so we can discuss these issues in person. We kicked this programme off with a Textile Reuse Open Day on Sunday 14th September at Bridge 5 Mill, where we had some fantastic conversations about what people want changing in textile reuse.
If you want to be involved in our consultations, share your thoughts, or otherwise chat to us about this project, please fill in our survey, or email us at: hello@stitchedup.coop.
