Clothing items that cannot be sold on or repaired can go through another recycling method. This involves collecting post-industrial waste, cloth and scraps left over from fabric and garment manufacture, and post-consumer waste – used clothes and other household textiles. All the fabric is sorted according to type, color and grade, and then shredded into fibers. The product, known as shoddy, can, if it is of a high grade, be mixed with new fibers and then spun for weaving or knitting. At this stage, designers and manufacturers are also stepping in and making clothes from this product, making a virtue out of its recycled nature. You should look out for these recycled products in the high street. Low grade shoddy can be used as carpet underlay, padding for mattresses and stuffing for cushions, amongst other uses. This process of recycling cloth, textiles and fibers reduces waste being put in landfill sites. Due to the ease and creativity of this process, recycling of such materials has been in place a long time, and a culture of easy disposal of clothes has not developed, as it has with other materials mentioned on other pages here, such as plastic, glass and paper.
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