Aside from thrifting clothes, recycling fashion waste is one of the most impactful ways to tackle the mounting piles of discarded clothing and textiles that the fast fashion industry creates each year. 

Brightfiber Textiles, an Amsterdam-based circular textile recycling company, has assembled a multi-step clothes recycling process, The Seattle Times reported. 

It uses multiple machines for optical material sorting, cutting and cleaning, and raw material production, with its logistics center found near Amsterdam's western port. 

The fast fashion industry, which includes big brands such as H&M, Zara, and Primark, mass-produces a large amount of trendy or in-style clothing at a low cost, often using outsourced labor and inexpensive materials. 

However, fast fashion items fall apart or fall out of trend almost as quickly as they are produced, which creates a massive amount of fashion waste. 

According to a statistic shared by Earth.org, the fast fashion industry produces over 100 billion garments each year, with more than 92 million tonnes entering landfills. 

These clothing items, often created from cheap polyester or other synthetic materials, can leach microplastics into the soil and water supply as the fabrics break apart over time in landfills. 

Brightfiber's circular textile recycling process aims to divert fashion waste from crowded landfills and back into machines and systems capable of processing and recycling textile waste. 

Brightfiber's optical material sorter uses the reflection of infrared light on fabrics to identify and sort textile waste by color and materials. 

A second machine, developed by Valvan, a Belgian-based machinery manufacturing company for the textile and recycling industries, cuts the fabric into smaller pieces and cleans it of buttons, zippers, and labels. 

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A third machine, developed by Brightfiber and Turkey-based textile machinery manufacturer Balkan Textile Machinery Ltd., turns the smaller pieces of fabric into a fluff material comparable to virgin cotton, which is then spun into yarn for new fabrics and end-products that Brightfiber sells to partner brands, such as King Louie. 

According to Brightfiber's CEO, Ellen Mensink, this "line" of machines can process up to 5.5 million pounds of fashion waste per year. With another line, she believes the company would have the capacity to process all the fashion waste in the metro Amsterdam area. 

"Technologies have evolved, and this is a big jump in [textile recycling] quality," said Andreas Bartl of Technical University Vienna, who studies textile recycling methods, per The Seattle Times. 

While recycling clothing waste can help minimize the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry, the ideal solution is to completely move away from fast fashion and adopt a more sustainable approach to shopping and garment production. 

Shopping for clothes secondhand, or thrifting, keeps clothing items out of landfills while allowing shoppers to refresh their wardrobes at a fraction of the cost of buying new clothes. 

Thrifting can also be a creative hobby if you can tailor your own clothes or upcycle thrifted clothes. 

Countries like France are also tackling the fast fashion culture, with the French Senate voting almost unanimously in favor of an anti-fast fashion law. 

Other countries in the European Union are implementing similar regulations to curb fast fashion, forcing textile producers to internalize the cost of the industry's waste.

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