Towards A Conceptual Framework of Sustainable Practices of Post-consumer Textile Waste at Garment End of Lifecycle: A Systematic Literature Review Approach

Abstract

Fashion is characterised by rapidly changing trends and consumption patterns which have led to complexities and dynamism of the fashion supply chain (SC). Excessive generation of wastes highlights the need for innovative ways to address unsustainable practices by feeding the waste back into the supply chain system. This paper reviews the extant literature on sustainability within the fashion industry’s supply chain to establish available sustainability practices to manage post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) at garment end of lifecycle. Four sustainable practices emerged from the review—education and engagement, recovery and redistribution, reuse, and recycling—and are central to a framework that shows the interaction of garment end of lifecycle practices and could the achievement of strategic competitive advantage. Our findings emphasise the importance for interaction and collaboration between consumers and retailers and further involvement of the entire supply chain. In addition, sustainability paradoxes were evident across the sustainable practices. To avoid this, for retailers are urged to shift towards cradle to cradle (closed loop) lifecycle supply chains. Furthermore, retailers should evaluate the practices they adopt by questioning their aim in the achievement of sustainability. We suggest that firms should consider the entire supply chain when adopting a sustainable practice and each agent’s role in achieving the overall outcome of sustained competitive advantage.

Drivers, barriers and performance outcomes of sustainable packaging: a systematic literature review

“…This approach has been practiced by several SLR studies in the field of sustainability (e.g. Rotimi et al , 2021). Step (1) has been exposed in the previous section.…”

Textile and Product Development from End-of-Use Cotton Apparel: A Study to Reclaim Value from Waste

“…The lifetime of garment utilization in the UK is 3 years [12]. The shortened life cycle of clothing and the disposal mindset of consumers caused an increase in post-consumer textile waste [13]. In the State of Florida, an average of 101.0 pounds of post-consumer textile waste was generated per person in 2019, which represented a 24.8% increase from an average of 80.9 pounds of post-consumer textile waste generation per person in 2014 [14].…”

A Delphi-Régnier Study Addressing the Challenges of Textile Recycling in Europe for the Fashion and Apparel Industry

“…Another technological barrier resulting from the sorting stage is reported in the literature [9,17,47,48,50,68]. As previously outlined, sorting is a manual and costly phase, and therefore, there is a need for an economically viable and effective way to recognize and sort textile materials, to further advance textile-to-textile recycling as requiring homogenous feedstocks [48,50].…”

“…As part of this complex textile flow management system, textile recycling involves a myriad of other stakeholders [9,35,47,57] such as charities, municipal waste-collection services, or resell organizations. Only a few mappings of textile flows can be found in the academic literature [16,57], and empirical studies investigating textile flows in these sorting facilities are lacking [54].…”