According to the Indian Textile Journal, it is estimated that more than one million tons of textiles are thrown away every year, with households discarding the highest proportion. Like all Indian cities, Bengaluru is facing a massive influx of textile waste. The end of life of textiles creates a considerable cost that no one is bearing right now. Only by forcing textile industries to take back or pay for storage or own the end of life costs will this very problematic textile waste be treated more sustainably. This is the first of a two-part series on the mounting textile waste that Bangalore generates and the various issues in disposing-recycling-reusing them.
In India, cloth and other household linen were rarely thrown out as rubbish. It was customary to pass it on to other family members as gifts or used for mopping, cleaning materials, or stitching to make quilts or sometimes exchanged. Each piece of the garment had a story around it, evoking a sentimental value and offering a window into the history of the household.
In Recycling Indian Clothing, author Lucy Norris notes: “Indian society is still partially a cloth economy, where cloth is both a currency and a means of incorporation, which has profound implications for disposal practices.” However, all this had changed since the 1990s, when the Indian economy opened up, and the rising urban middle class, with significant disposable income, saw the beginning of a consumption boom.
A Deccan Herald article in December 2021 stated that “textiles are the third-largest source of municipal waste, with more than 70%-80% being sent to landfills or incinerated, instead of being recycled or reprocessed”. An important point for consideration is that the textile industry is the third biggest plastic consumer. Similarly, in Pakistan, textile waste is causing serious concern. There are no recycling factories in the country, or the government’s interested in setting up a few.
