The large cordoned-off area piled high with black bags of clothes in the Jack & Jill Foundation charity shop in Portlaoise is hard to ignore.
Housed in an industrial unit on the edge of the midlands town, the busy shop is full of furniture, household items, books and clothing.
It is the back room activity of sorting through the mountains of clothing that takes up a good chunk of the volunteers’ time.
“We’d go through about 60 bags a day and it takes about six volunteers throughout the day to sort through it,” says Martina Cooper, the manager of the shop.
This scenario is repeated in many of the 650-plus charity shops throughout Ireland. It’s a labour-intensive task that workers accept as part of the job with donations at an all-time high, according to charity shop managers.
“Our donation space hasn’t been emptied fully since last April and I extended it last year to cope with more donations,” says Cooper.
She’s not complaining though because sales have risen too and she says younger people are buying more second-hand clothing.
“It’s cool now to buy second-hand.”
The bigger chains of charity shops operate what’s called a cascading system in that clothes that are not sold in one shop are redistributed to other shops for potential sale.
St Vincent de Paul (SVP) has so-called order fulfilment centres around the country where unsold items are sent to for redistribution to other SVP shops and tracked through the system.
“The use of our eight order fulfilment centres has doubled the resale rate of donated textiles from 5,000 to 10,000 tonnes per year,” says Dermot McGilloway, national retail development manager for SVP.
But even with this redistribution of clothes between charity shops, only about 50 per cent of donated clothing that comes into charity shops is in good enough condition to be resold. The other 50 per cent is sold on to Cookstown Textile Recyclers in Randalstown, Co Antrim.
When it arrives there, it is sorted into up to 250 categories. Of the original 50 per cent sent, 35 per cent is exported for reuse in markets abroad, 14 per cent is sent to pulping mills to be turned into insulation, mattress stuffing and other materials and 1 per cent is sent to landfill or for incineration.
Up to 95 per cent of charity shops in the Republic use Cookstown Textile Recyclers, according to Mark Sweeney, chair of Charity Retail Ireland.
Sweeney categorises it as a “Grade A” facility because of its comprehensive on-site sorting and grading of textiles.
“Clothing is dealt with in the most ethical way possible and what’s good enough is sold on to textile markets where it will make a difference,” says Sweeney.
While he acknowledges that “the whole world of textiles is in a shambles at the moment” due to conflicts and currency devaluations, Sweeney argues that countries such as Ghana and Kenya still want sorted textile materials.
It’s the unsorted textile materials which have caused the biggest controversy. Shipped out of Ireland through various supply chains across Europe, much of these unsorted textiles end up polluting air and soil in unregulated waste facilities in some African countries.
Some experts in the sector hope that forthcoming EU legislation on Extended Producer Responsibility and the Eco-design Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) will be potential game-changers to how textiles are manufactured and tracked throughout their life.
“The Digital Product Passport (DPP), which is part of the ESPR, will enable the tracking of a product from raw material to end of life,” says Linda Ward, secretary of Charity Retail Ireland.
The idea is that if a piece of clothing can be tracked over time from when it is made to when it is discarded, the quality and durability of that garment will be revealed.
“At the moment we don’t know what happens to each product but with data from the DPP, we will see what’s quality and what isn’t,” says Ward.
At the heart of this ambitious EU legislation is a hope for a reduction in the manufacturing of low-quality clothing
The overproduction of clothing, particularly poor quality clothing, in the first place is the key issue to solving the glut of textiles, according to sustainability experts. Current estimates are that up to 30 per cent more clothes are made than are needed.
“The root of the problem is overproduction of low grade materials that have no resale value and can’t be recycled. If you pay €1.50 for something you bought online, what can a charity shop resell it for?” says Sweeney.
The influx of fast fashion items to charity shops, some of which mightn’t even have been worn, is adding to the mountains of clothing volunteers have to sort through.
“There is a misconception about what we can sell. People come looking for good quality clothes that will last at affordable prices. We make every effort to sell fast fashion items but people don’t want it,” says Sweeney.
In Ireland, we dispose of 164,000 tonnes of clothes every year, making us the second highest producer of textile waste in the EU.
“We currently have enough clothes on the planet for six generations of people. Until we do something about the over-production of textiles, we can’t solve this,” says Sweeney.
Many of these fast-fashion items along with soiled clothes, underwear, socks and other unsorted low-value materials become classified as end of life textiles. If exported in unsorted bags, these are the types of clothing which end up in landfill sites in Africa.
The lack of infrastructure to create new uses for end-of-life textiles is a missed opportunity, according to those in the industry.
“Reuse of clothing needs to be protected in the waste hierarchy and the Irish Government recognises the role charity shops play in sorting textiles for resale and reuse,” says Sweeney.
However, he points out that unsaleable textiles could be reused for insulation and construction materials such as internal and external boards.
The Netherlands-based company Greenful is a manufacturer of construction materials made from recycled textile and plastic waste, which plans to expand its network to 10 factories across Europe by 2029.
Meanwhile, the Irish Government set up a Textile Advisory Group in 2022 to better understand the journey of textiles from manufacture to end of life. It is expected to publish a report in April.
