We take care of the collection and the further utilization of the collected items down the clothes life cycle, making sure that everything is recovered in the best possible way.

The waste management activities are carried in compliance with the five-step hierarchy of the policy for prevention and waste management under the Waste Framework Directive (Directive 2008/98/EC), according to the following priority:
1. Prevention;
2. Preparation for re-use;
3. Recycling;
4. Other recovery, e.g. energy recovery;
5. Dispose

Even if this is the last step of using the garment for you, it is actually one of the most important stages in the textile life cycle extension. Separating the textile products from the residual waste allows its further manipulation – reuse, recycling or other recovery.

The sorting is the backbone of the circular textile economy. At this stage of the cycle, it’s decided what value is going to be extracted from the textile products by evaluating the best possible way of utilization.

All used garments undergo a two-stage process of classification that determines the eligibility for reuse and the quality grade. Some of them are further washed and repaired to be reused as clothes.
This is a labor-intensive process where 300 of our skilled and experienced professionals examine all the items according to strict sorting and grading procedures, separating them in 350 different articles.

Reusable clothes are traded as second hand clothes, which is the most efficient and environmentally friendly way of prolonging their life as it requires the least additional resources and energy.

Most of the usable textile products, collected in Bulgaria, are sold in countries with a lower standard of living. The main goal is to find an owner for each garment and thus extending its life cycle.

There is a certain amount of textile waste that is unusable as clothing but can be recovered as rags. These are cotton fabrics, which are indispensable consumables in various industrial plants, metalworking workshops, shipbuilding, printing shops, workshops, car washes, etc.

Certain fabrics with good absorbency are separated for this use. Textile waste is separated by composition and colour and cut to size on specialised machines, removing zips, buttons, collars, cuffs and other hard parts. To ensure there are no items that could scratch the surfaces being cleaned, the rags are run through a metal detector.

While working on the development of its own recycling facility for the garments, which are not appropriate for direct re-use, TexCycle is partnering with other companies, specialized in different materials recycling.

Certain requirement criteria are followed for customizable sorting by:
– characterization of fibre compositions – based on Near Infrared Reflectance (NIR)
– colour
– type of fabric construction
– removal of hard particles, shredding the cloths into required parameters

Depending on the composition, textiles are recycled into new fibers for spinning or they are used in the production of nonwoven products as insulations and felt.

The criteria for choosing our partners, dealing with the subsequent treatment of the waste, is the eco-friendly, complete methods of treatment they use. The waste is submitted only to licensed companies, which can prove their sustainable way of working.

We currently develop our full-scale frayed fibers recovery facility. We are developing the sorting input process to ensure that the output material (shoddy) is with constancy of parameters such as color, length, and composition.

We are engaged in varieties of projects in the textile recycling development, aiming to turn textile waste into mainstream raw material.

We are striving to achieve the minimum possible percentage of unrecycled materials, which are currently submitted for energy recovery.

As unusable clothing includes a wide variety of fabrics (a significant proportion of which are mixed) and colours, it is not yet possible to find a suitable way of recycling each type separately. This makes it necessary to pass them on for other uses – their use as alternative fuel in specialised and certified installations of energy-intensive industries (such as cement factories).

In this process, the waste is shredded to produce modified fuel (RDF) or treated directly with processing technologies. This has a beneficial effect on the environment by reducing the amount of waste in landfills, saving energy from non-renewable sources (solid fuels and natural gas) and reducing carbon emissions due to the combustion of solid fuels.

Donating clothes is not the main purpose for collecting them in specialised containers, but it is often a side activity. TexCycle partners primarily with municipal centers to assist people in need, providing specific items upon request. This type of partnership is convenient for social welfare organizations, as it saves them space and the need to organize sorting and distribution.

Many of the clothes that come directly to them are unusable and then have to be passed on for further use. Therefore, partnering with a clothes collection company saves this effort.