BCG: How is Fast Fashion Promoting Textile Waste?

In 2024, discarded clothing reached 120 million metric tons globally, showing how fashion consumption has shifted over the past 20 years.

A change in consumer habits, rising incomes and new trends mean that people buy more clothing but wear each item less frequently.

This has resulted in global fibre production more than doubling since 2000, according to BCG’s 2025 textile report.

The environmental impact of fast fashion

Each year, textile waste worth approximately US$150bn in raw materials is lost by being sent to landfill, burned or shipped overseas.

BCG says that if a quarter of these resources were recovered, it could offset the combined annual materials expenses of the 30 biggest global fashion companies.

The increase in textile waste poses big challenges for both the economy and the environment.

In 2024, approximately 80% of discarded clothing ended up in landfills or incinerators, while 12% was reused and far less than 1% was recycled into new fibres.

The process of producing textiles, from extracting raw materials to manufacturing, accounts for 92% of the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Burning, open dumping or sending textiles to landfill all generate further emissions and can release harmful microplastics into the environment.

Catharina Martínez-Pardo, Managing Director at BCG, said on LinkedIn: “Every year, the world discards enough textiles to fill more than 200 Olympic stadiums.

“Yet less than 1% of that waste is recycled into new fabric.

“But the fashion industry has an opportunity to spin that waste into value.

“Scaling a circular textile economy has the potential to cut waste, unlock US$50bn+ in raw material value and create 180,000 new jobs.”

How is the fashion industry adapting?

According to BCG’s report, there is rising pressure from regulatory bodies and supply chains, as textile waste continues to grow.

Governments are pushing to reduce the impact of consumer products on the environment, with a key focus on textile waste reduction.

In the EU, textiles are in the top five types of household products contributing to climate change.

This has resulted in governments introducing a new set of recycling laws to shift the responsibility onto producers rather than consumers.

This means that the companies producing textiles must pay for collection and recycling efforts where their items are sold.

Similar regulations are beginning to emerge elsewhere in the world, for example in the US, Canada and Chile.

Textile supply chains are also facing vulnerability, with extreme weather events and geopolitical tensions having the potential to harm the industry.

The BCG report predicts that nearly half of global cotton crops could experience shorter growing seasons due to rising temperatures by 2040.

Major global brands are starting to invest in recycling initiatives, including Adidas, New Balance and Puma.

The lack of recycling infrastructure

Despite new laws and regulations, barriers are still in place preventing textile waste being fully recovered.

Stakeholders throughout the value chain are limited by clothing not being designed with recycling in mind and waste contamination and infrastructure leading to poor recycling efforts.

Concerns about the quality, availability and integration into supply chains of recycled fibres can make them less appealing to stakeholders.

For example, recycled polyester can be more than twice as expensive as virgin polyester, which means that designers and manufacturers have to balance material cost with the environmental impact.

Waste management infrastructure is not yet designed for textile recycling, with many collection channels leading to resale markets.

This requires a lot of manual labour, with humans sorting clothing to be resold or disposed of.

BCG claims that sorting processes must be modernised to handle the larger volumes of discarded clothing.

It says that advanced technology including AI and robotics can increase the speed and precision of textile sorting, which allows larger quantities of waste to be processed quickly.