Textile Waste: Help maake a Difference With our Textiles

Every very year, each person in the United Kingdom discards 3.1kg of textile waste, with 1.7kg ending in landfills. It’s time to make a difference

According to those statistics, the United Kingdom produces 350,000 tonnes of textile waste annually, which is then sent to landfills. That's a lot of clothing. Especially when you consider that less than a fifth of used clothing is recycled in the UK while over 2 tonnes of clothing are bought here every minute.

There’s more bad news: By 2030, statistics tell us, we’ll have consumed around 102 million tonnes of fabric each year. And we’re recycling less than 1% of that fabric into new clothing.

The fashion industry is responsible for around 8 to 10% of global greenhouse emissions and 20% of global water waste. Then there's microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans, of which 35% is caused by the fashion industry, which uses many synthetic fabrics including nylon, polyester, and acrylic.

This is why maake has taken action, and we ask you to do the same. The vast UK textile industry is the fourth largest producer of textile waste if combined with Europe, which is an devastating environmental impact. We need to start acting now.

Save on Waste: Make our Textile Industry Sustainable

As you can see from these latest statistics, the UK textile industry is currently considered in a negative light regarding sustainability. During textile production, factories consume lots of water, energy, and fossil fuels. This isn’t sustainable.

Sadly, manufacturing processes for the clothing industry and fabrics are also associated with toxic chemicals, waste and pollution. There’s also lots of discussion about employees’ despicable working conditions, which may not be as bad as in Asia, India and other locations, but still needs a lot of work done.

So it’s time to discover new business models, to consider sustainability and chemical recycling as well as textile waste recycling and collection.

We Need to Manufacture Sustainable Clothing & Textiles

Introducing new, more sustainable textiles to the clothing and fabric industries can make a real difference to garments’ overall environmental impact. 

This is according to the 2025 London Textiles Action Plan, which sets out a programme of activities aiming to “accelerate progress towards a zero waste, low carbon circular economy for fashion and textiles in London”. The city is described as “one of the world’s most iconic and trend-setting fashion capitals” and has, according to their website, “the opportunity to be a global exemplar for circular fashion and textiles, and deliver action to reduce the city’s textiles-related environmental footprint and support a transition towards a zero-waste and low-carbon fashion industry”.

The plan outlines three important pillars to deliver its vision:

1.     Make Things Well: Create quality garments.

2.     Use Textiles for as Long as Possible: “The plan will create and enhance opportunities for care and maintenance, repair, reuse, rental, swapping and sharing models.”

3.     Reuse & Recycle Non-Rewearable Fabrics Locally: “…To improve practices and drive investment into collection, sorting, recycling and reusing… non-wearable textiles locally”.

To do this, it aims to create circular economy hubs for fabrics, initiate educational programmes for schools, request support from local small businesses, enable segregated clothing collection so to eliminate some waste, campaign towards more reusing and recycling initiatives.

Solving the Textile Waste Problem

Along with other businesses in the textiles and clothing industries, we believe in sustainability and saving the environment wherever possible. At maake, we use sustainable methods to save on textile waste and recycling.

Here’s an idea of what we do as a sustainable printer and manufacturer: 

• We Print More Sustainably: We use 95% less energy in our processes than traditional textile printing. We also use only 100% renewable energy sources.
• We insist on zero waste: At maake, we don't waste a single textile. We send cut-off textiles and excess textiles to local charities, schools, and other educational institutions so that the textiles can be reused to make clothes and other items. We also provide customers with free upcycling bags of different sizes filled with offcuts.
• maake insists on recycling paper and ink waste: By recycling, we ensure that the waste won’t land in landfills every year. 
• We have cut down on the amount of electricity we use: To do this, we have fitted our machines with special cut-off switches. This technology saves on electricity consumption.
• We only print-on-demand: We only print exactly what our customers order, which means we produce no extra waste fabric. We also don’t resell or restock any printed textiles that people return to us. Instead, we create products out of those textiles.
• We use no water when we print on cotton and linen: We focus on Minimising Fabric & Ink Waste, so our printing processes for these textiles produce less than a thimbleful of ink waste per 100m printed.
• We use sustainable, non-toxic inks: The inks we use to print on textiles meet Oeko-Tex 100 and GOTS 6.0 requirements. These inks are also safe for kids – they are EN71-3 certified.

• • We only use ‘safe’ material: We only work with ethically sourced textiles bought from trusted local mills wherever possible. This not only helps the local economy, it also reduces our carbon footprint. We also work with mills that are all REACH accredited. Additionally, many of these mills also hold SEDEX accreditation. Check out our guide to Textile Certification.

Give Textiles a Second Life

It’s time to take a page out of our book. Giving a textile a second life (recycling textiles) is something we do every day at maake, whether it's for making clothing or other products.

According to the Wrap, an organisation that “transforms the world’s broken systems” and tackles climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s important to help create a circular economy. This involves taking resources already available on the planet, such as clothes, and, instead of disposing of these resources, recycling them, and giving them a second life. Whether you resew the clothes and create new garments and then sell them, or use the textiles to make something else, you're recycling, which is great.

As textile manufacturers and printers, maake is working towards creating circular economy action. We believe that reusing and recycling textiles will help the UK economy grow. These recycling efforts can help lessen the impact on nature and climate change, and assist people to lead more sustainable, healthier lives. That’s food for thought…

We have created a charity called maakeLess Fabric Waste, and we work daily to assist creative businesses in makign a positive impact on textile waste disposal. Email us at volunteer@maake.com with the headline ‘‘Let’s maakeLess Textile Waste” and we will add you to our list of charity volunteers! You can choose to do as much or as little as your time allows you.

We strongly advocate you collect and reuse textiles instead of them landing up disposed of as waste. Clothes recycling bins are a start, but we're taking clothes and textile recycling one step further.

To find out more about fabric recycling, take a look at our informative blog on the subject, which explains how recycling clothing and textiles can transform the future. We also wrote in depth about The Problem With Fast Fashion, which offers insight into what is currently happening in fashion, where items of clothing are discarded the moment a new trend appears.

How We Recycle Fabric

We offer free upcycling bags that come in three sizes – 1kg, 2kg or 15kg bags of plain material offcuts. You can collect these yourself from our factory at no charge. Otherwise, we will deliver them to your door. That's textile waste collection, whatever way suits you best!

By ordering one of these bags of plain material offcuts, you’re making a sustainable contribution to our planet, and saving these textiles from landing up in landfills. And you're getting textile waste completely free to use for your business by making clothing and other textile items.

Recycle these textiles by using them to manufacture products for your business, whether it's clothes, tableware, or home décor items. They are plain textiles, so you can print on them, if you wish, or dye them, and create clothing. Whatever you do, the products made from fabric waste are yours to use to help your business grow and put food on the table.

Let’s do some arithmetic… 1 x 15kg bags of textile offcuts that are not going to landfill is equivalent to saving the types of fabric waste (usually in the form of old clothes) that stats tell us are being created by three people in the UK each year.

Each time a person orders one of our textile recycling bags, they make a valuable difference to recycling textiles. And they do this by advocating sustainability!

This information provides more food for thought.

Think about it – and make a sustainable choice…

Your Sustainability Reward for Textile Waste Disposal

Once you receive your free material offcuts from maake, we will send you our ‘maakeLess Textile Waste’ contributor certificate. It's your reward for saving fabric offcuts and creating something out of them, whether you remake clothing or other products for your business.

Share it with the world – take a photo with your certificate and tag all your friends and followers. Don't forget to tag us: @maakeuk. We’ll also add you to our extensive contributor list for the world to see!