Canada

The study aimed to estimate the percentage of textile waste in Ontario's residential waste stream and its applicability to Canada. Conducted by Fashion Takes Action, Seneca College, and AET Group in partnership with Stewardship Ontario, the audits sampled waste from ten municipalities across Ontario. These municipalities were selected to represent diverse regions, including large urban, medium urban, rural, regional, and township areas, each with varying waste management programs, such as weekly or bi-weekly collection and depot systems. The audits analyzed waste from 2,846 single-family households and 35 multi-residential complexes over three seasons: summer, fall, and winter. Textiles were pre-sorted into categories, including clothing, home textiles, shoes, accessories, soft toys, and other items, while contaminated materials unsuitable for analysis were excluded. The seasonal audits revealed slight variations in textile waste percentages, with fall showing the highest percentage (4.72%), followed by summer (4.41%) and winter (4.15%). The average percentage of textile waste across all seasons was calculated at 4.43%.Using this average, it was estimated that Ontario generated 176,343 tonnes of textile waste in 2018, which was extrapolated to 480,576 tonnes Canada-wide. These findings highlight the significant volume of textile waste in residential streams and underscore the opportunity to divert these materials for resale or resource recovery to meet growing global fibre demand.

The scope of this study includes pre-consumer textile waste from non-residential waste stream and post-consumer textile waste from the residential waste stream.

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1. The pre-consumer textile waste comes from fibre & yarn mills, textile manufacturers, apparel manufacturing and the clothing retail sector.2. The post-consumer textile waste includes clothing, home textiles, accessories, footwear, and stuffed toys which are produced by private households and multifamily homes (if they are managed by municipalities).

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