Making the textile waste supply chain more transparent and sustainable. This is the goal of Utilitalia, the federation that brings together companies operating in the public services of water, the environment, electricity and gas, which in the past few hours presented the “Guidelines for the award of the service management of used clothing “.

Urban sanitation companies have the function of contracting authorities and can play an important role in promoting transparency, social and environmental sustainability and prevention. In the document these companies can find the indications to select honest, efficient and transparent operators, and to widen the level of competition.

“On January 5, the European Commission published the Roadmap for defining the European strategy for textile products, while the package of European directives on the circular economy – highlights the vice president of Utilitalia, Filippo Brandolini – has long since established that every Member State will have to establish the separate collection of textile waste by January 1, 2025, and Italy has brought this deadline forward to January 1 next year. This will entail the development of collection services and therefore an increase in used clothing collected in a differentiated way and a growing need on the part of the system to absorb new flows, and consequently a greater organizational capacity not only of the collection companies, but of the whole production chain”.

For Brandolini “textile waste will increasingly play a non-marginal role in the circular economy. First of all because, thanks to the preparation for reuse, it is possible to extend the life of many garments and therefore reduce the volumes of waste to be disposed of. Furthermore, future technological developments will allow us to recycle what cannot be reused, recovering textile fibers, for example, through chemical recycling ”.