New Look, M&S, Sainsbury’s and Oxfam are moving beyond clothing take-back schemes to tackle a harder bottleneck: converting non-reusable garments into consistent industrial feedstock for fibre-to-fibre recycling.
UK retailers New Look, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s, together with Oxfam and Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, have launched The Circuit, a collaborative platform intended to create commercially viable value chains for recycling UK post-consumer textiles back into textile raw materials.
The programme connects retailers with collection and recovery organisations, automated sorting, pre-processing, recycling technologies, digital systems and textile manufacturers.
1.45 million tonnes need better routes
The scale of the feedstock challenge is substantial. WRAP estimates the UK generated around 1.45 million tonnes of used textiles in 2022, with about 711,000 tonnes—49%—discarded through household residual waste and general-waste streams. Current UK textile-recycling feedstock is estimated at only about 34,000 tonnes.
The Circuit will initially target textiles that are no longer suitable for reuse, separating and preparing them to specifications required by mechanical and chemical fibre-to-fibre recyclers.
Batley becomes the testing ground
The first phase starts in January 2027 at Oxfam’s Batley, Yorkshire facility. Oxfam will separate reusable from non-reusable clothing and operate automated textile-sorting equipment. Partners will simultaneously develop traceability and reporting systems, test feedstock specifications and build commercial routes between recovered textiles and recyclers.
Biffa and Ekman Group are development partners, while recycling partners include Usha Yarns, Kipas, Reju and Worn Again Technologies, giving the initiative access to both mechanical and emerging chemical-recycling pathways.
The missing link is feedstock economics
The importance of The Circuit lies less in inventing another recycling process than in solving the aggregation, sorting and specification problem upstream of recycling plants.
Industrial recyclers need predictable volumes with known fibre composition, contamination levels and quality. Retailers, meanwhile, need credible outlets and traceability if recycled-content sourcing is to scale.
If The Circuit can convert fragmented post-consumer clothing into standardised, traceable and economically viable feedstock, it could become a replicable model connecting European waste streams with recycling and textile-manufacturing capacity globally. The critical metrics to watch in 2027 will be tonnes processed, sorting yields, recycling conversion rates and the cost of recovered fibre versus virgin material.
