Is Circular Fashion the Answer to Clothes Waste?

ACT is featured in the BBC podcast What in the World, in an episode exploring whether circular fashion can help reduce the growing volume of textile waste around the world.

The episode highlights a global challenge: every second, a garbage truck full of clothing is sent to landfill, and less than 1% is recycled into new garments. One way to change this is to keep textiles in use for longer through reuse, repair, and recycling — the core ideas behind circular fashion.

From Nairobi, Whitney Speke shares how ACT works to reduce clothing waste in Africa by collecting post-consumer textiles, sorting them by hand, and keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible. She also reflects on the “30 wear challenge,” which encourages people to wear their clothes at least 30 times before replacing them.

The podcast also features Taylor Greene from Circ, a US-based company developing textile-to-textile recycling technology aimed at lowering the fashion industry’s carbon footprint.