Pre-Consumer Textile Waste Valorisation Pathways: Waste Characterisation and Environmental Implications

The textile industry’s environmental footprint is an increasing concern due to high resource consumption and the generation of waste and pollution, as highlighted by the European Commission [1]. Effective management of textile waste is therefore essential to support sustainability and accelerate the transition toward a circular economy. However, circularity remains constrained by blended-fiber compositions, limited recycling efficiency, and inadequate sorting practices, which reduce the quality of recovered materials and restrict higher-value applications [2,3]. This study develops a characterization-driven approach to support valorization pathways for pre-consumer textile cutting waste generated in garment manufacturing and to quantify the environmental performance of a selected valorization system through life cycle assessment (LCA). Cutting-waste streams from a garment production facility are analyzed over three representative weeks. The waste is manually sorted by fiber composition and color groups, and physical properties relevant to reuse and recycling are assessed, including fabric offcut size distribution. The results are aggregated to determine an average waste profile, which is then used to define a feasible routing strategy consistent with the waste hierarchy and industrial constraints. Based on the average profile, fractions are directed to (i) reuse/upcycling and remanufacturing when material retention is feasible, (ii) mechanical recycling into nonwoven applications (e.g., insulation materials) for mixed fractions, and (iii) fiber-to-fiber recycling for sufficiently clean mono-material streams; the remaining fraction is assigned to energy recovery when reuse or recycling is not technically feasible. An LCA is performed using a functional unit of 1 kg of pre-consumer cutting waste, including the selected downstream routes. By linking waste properties to a practical valorization routing strategy and LCA modeling, this work supports more effective circular management of pre-consumer textile waste.