The circular economy is gaining a central point in de debate of the future for the different sectors, including the textile sector. As we know, the textile is a sector that has experienced a great development in recent decades as it has increased its production to figures never seen before. This development has had as a result a great environmental impact, given the lack of a correct and professional recycling system for the discarded garments and textile waste.

Currently, the unsold clothes or defective garments are sent to the developing countries or they are deposited in landfills. This accumulation of textile waste causes huge ecological problems since the garments take more than forty years to disintegrate and in this process a serious contamination is produced derived from the chemicals of the clothes that damage the soil and water.

The arising of the environmental awareness combined with the need to make the most of resources and prolong the life of garments (reuse, revive, recycle) has become a main challenge in the textile sector. The big brands and those with environmental values ​​are establishing in their companies the bases to respond to the principles of the circular economy.

This is a issue of great importance for the future of the economy in the textile sector, because of it the mass media is reporting the problem in detail. A good example is the article “The future will be sustainable or it will not be” published in El País (16/09/2018): “to face the ecological challenge, Europe has decided to abandon the linear economy, in which it is produced, consumed and thrown away, and moving towards a circular model in which it is committed to minimum extraction of raw materials and maximum use of waste, this is a transverse and global change that has also reflected the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for 2030. One of them is to guarantee responsible production and consumption”. You can read the article here.