Why Simply Donating Your Clothes Isn’t Enough for a Sustainable Future | Ep. 1
Published by Circular Fashion LA
Intro
Hello and welcome back to the Circular Fashion LA podcast, where our goal is to unravel the myths and lies of greenwashing and sustainability and stitch together real practical solutions for a more regenerative future.
The Biggest Solution to Ensure Recycling Works
Today, I want to talk about closing the loop on recycling and what is the biggest, simplest, and least expensive actual solution we as consumers—you and me—can do to actually ensure our recycling efforts are working.
The Strawberry Metaphor: Why a Buyer's Market Matters
First, let me set the scene with a little metaphor.
Let's say I'm a farmer farming strawberries. I work and toil, and I bring these strawberries to market, but the market doesn't exist. Nobody wants my strawberries. What's going to happen? Well, my strawberries are going to rot on the vine. They're going to go bad. I, as a farmer, am going to go out of business, and the whole system will crumble.
It's the exact same thing for food, video games, toilet paper, designer handbags, for anything. Recycling is no different. There needs to be a buyer's market to keep that business going for the whole system to work in the first place.
So if we give our clothes to recyclers and think that's enough, it's not. You have to buy recycled in order to ensure you are recycling.
Donating Fast Fashion Isn't Enough
About a year or two ago in our LA facility down in the arts district, we had a fashionista come with bags and bags of clothing. She wanted to feel good about herself and dispose of it in the right way by giving it to someone like us who would keep it in the loop.
Now, did she go buy from us or from some other secondhand or recycled company after she donated her clothes? I don't know, maybe she did. But judging by the amount of Shein, Boohoo, Topshop, PrettyLittleThing, H&M, and other ultra-fast-fashion brands that were in her bags of clothes, I would guess that she just cleaned out her closet all to go get the next haul from those exact same fast fashion brands.
So, is this the solution? Just giving away your clothes to a collector or processor like ourselves if you are not buying back from people like us—whether you buy from us, another secondhand store, or an upcycled brand?
No, you are part of the problem. You are not donating your clothes; you're merely giving away your problem for someone else to handle.
If we at Circular Fashion LA don't have shoppers buying from us, it doesn't matter how much you donate to us—we're not going to stay in business. You must feed back into the system.
Consumer Actions: Voting With Your Wallet
Now, for textile-to-textile recycling, that can be a little more difficult because we as consumers aren't necessarily in control of what garments were recycled. You can look on the labels, sure, but you can do simpler things like:
Purchasing secondhand
Purchasing from sustainable small businesses who are doing the hard work of circularity and sustainability and recycling
That's on us as the consumers. We need to vote with our wallets. We need to choose via how we purchase the world we want to live in. If we want a more sustainable world with less waste and with fair labor standards, then we have to choose to purchase from those companies who do just that. It's up to you.
The Industrial Fashion Level and Brand Commitments
Now, that's on the consumer level. Let's talk about the bigger industrial fashion industry level.
What about recycling technology companies seeking to do textile-to-textile recycling, like Renewcell (which has since come back as Circulose), Ambercycle, Everne, and a bunch of others out there? Are they going to survive if the big brands—the Zaras, the H&Ms, the Sheins, the Topshops—aren't making commitments to buy their fabrics and fibers? No, they're not going to survive.
We actually learned that very shocking lesson back in 2024 when Renewcell, a Swedish company, actually declared bankruptcy about a year after it scaled up its factory. The brands who had made commitments learned that, at least at that point in time, purchasing these recycled fibers was not exactly Costco-competitive to the virgin materials available on the market. So these brands ran, they abandoned the mission, and Renewcell declared bankruptcy.
Thankfully, they resecured funding and are back as of 2025 as Circulose.
And in our hometown backyard—Los Angeles—Ambercycle has been scaling up, doing the R&D technology for probably almost a decade now. They are actually seeing brand commitments from the likes of Zara, REI, and others. That's great!
These brands need to commit. They must commit. They have to choose recycled fabrics from these technology companies who are investing in closed-loop textile-to-textile recycling in order for this technology to scale. You can't just pour money into the technology without having the buyers to keep feeding the system.
It's up to the brands to put a little more money into it at this point. Yes, it might be a little more expensive at the moment while these technologies are scaling, but eventually, if we keep overproducing the way we are:
Virgin materials will become rarer and harder to obtain.
Droughts will affect cotton supplies.
Eventually, hopefully, oil company subsidies will end, and oil will be priced where it should be for petrochemical and polyester companies, making recycling truly cost-competitive.
How to Close the Loop Together
To close the loop:
Consumers must purchase recycled, secondhand, upcycled, and use clothing repair services.
Brands must choose recycled inputs from up-and-coming companies like Circulose, Ambercycle, and Everne, even if it costs a bit more.
Governments need to legislate to make circularity and recyclability more attractive and cease the subsidies of oil and petrochemical markets.
When clothes are made by brands who care, they are almost always of higher quality, so they will last you longer. And then, when you need something different, you can do fun things like redye it, upcycle it, repair it, or add patches.
So there you have it. What do you think? Let us know! Please like and subscribe—it does a lot to help our small business and our growing channel.
We'll see you in the next one. Stay green. Thank you!