Reduce, Reuse, Rewear: Part Two The Textile Secondary Market in Canada

Commissioned by NACTR, with the support of Environment and Climate Change Canada, and in collaboration with Oakdene Hollins, this study’s objective was to evaluate post-consumer textile waste management system’s lost opportunities from economic,environmental, and societal impact perspective of textile reuse. Components of this study include a material and economic flow analysis to identify pinch points and an infrastructure gap analysis of collection and recovery.

Textiles can be defined as, used, or new clothes, accessories, footwear and other ‘portable’ textiles, such as home textiles and soft toys, no longer needed or wanted by residents. These will be referred to as postconsumer textiles. Note that this does not include textiles in furniture or mattresses.

Municipalities are the intended audience for this report as they control key portions of the collection infrastructure and have the capacity to enable and support the development of textile recovery systems. They also have a strong role in public messaging about how to ensure that no-longer-wanted textiles are diverted towards reuse operators.

This report is designed to offer fact-based direction for increasing post-consumer textile waste diversion from landfill across Canada. You can read the report below.