| By Paul Tullis At the height of the holiday season on Amsterdam’s Kalverstraat last December, thousands of shoppers who regularly descend on the popular shopping district came face to face with the grim reality behind humanity’s sartorial excess. A local activist group had deposited an enormous pile of clothes on the sidewalk, in sight of stores such as Adidas, Zara and the popular Dutch casual fashion chain Cotton Club. Some seven feet-tall and 25-feet around, the garment dump drew puzzled looks from passersby, some of whom stopped to read handwritten signs poking out the top. “Every 10 minutes we throw away this much clothing in the Netherlands,” read one. The intent, the organizers said, wasn’t just to draw attention to clothing waste, but to urge companies to reveal how much clothing they make—a first step toward addressing what’s long been a disastrous side-effect of the phenomenon known as “fast-fashion.” But while a local newspaper ran an article on the protest, not much else came of it. It was however emblematic of a now-well understood problem, and its seemingly intractable nature. Tied to the arrival in the 1990s of fast fashion—which for the uninitiated is essentially the ability to churn out new clothing lines at cheap prices—the environmental destruction caused by discarded and disintegrating clothing cannot be understated. Attempts at reuse and recycling have only put a small dent in the worsening problem, hindered by a thorny set of technological obstacles to making old clothing new again.  A 6,000-kilogram pile of discarded clothes was left in Amsterdam by activists from Dutch Sustainable Fashion Circle late last year. The group called on fashion companies to be transparent about their production volumes. Photographer: Martina Nováková/Fashion Statement Now Yet a new wave of recycling tech is taking hold, with companies and entrepreneurs hoping to break through the barrier between a planet drowning in old clothes and one where everything is effectively a hand-me-down. One problem has to do with sorting fashion waste — a challenge being taken on by Swedish Waste Management Association (Sysav) and Wieland Textiles, a company just outside Amsterdam owned by Brightfiber Textiles BV. To recycle clothing waste in a way that doesn’t do further damage to the environment, different colors must be separated. Otherwise, the raw materials and yarns produced from recycled clothing end up with an unappealing grey hue that, while suitable for mops and stuffing, aren’t the foundation of a sustainable clothing line. But Brightfiber and Sysav have come up with something called an optical sorting machine. Since different colors and materials reflect light differently, the machine allows items to be differentiated simply by bouncing light off of them. The ability to separate fibers is also improving, thanks to chemical processes now deployed by Frankfurt-based Reju, a company started in 2023 by Patrik Frisk, a former chief executive of Under Armour and president of Timberland. The company has found a way to separate cotton and wool from polyester or elastane—the material which gives yoga pants, underwear waistbands and skinny jeans their stretch. La Roche in France, Rester in Finland and Valvan in Belgium meanwhile have developed machines that tear clothing items into small pieces, cleaning them of buttons, zippers and labels. Taken together, these new technologies may enable recycling at a volume never before possible. But the open question is will it be enough for clothing companies to sacrifice the easier, more destructive path to fast-fashion? Read the full story on Bloomberg.com to learn more about these new technologies and how European regulation may make them more in demand. | 
