In the United States, an estimated 15 million tons of textiles end up in landfills or are burned every year. This waste, amounting to 85 percent of the textiles produced in a year, is a growing environmental problem. In 2022, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a law banning the disposal of textiles in the trash, aiming to up recycling percentages. But recycling textiles isn’t always easy. Those that can’t be resold as-is are sent to facilities to be sorted by fabric type. Sorting by hand is labor intensive,…
