Kiwi startup giving New Zealand's textile waste a second life

A New Zealand entrepreneur is tackling the country's textile waste problem by collecting unwearable clothing, fabric scraps and unsold second-hand garments and shipping them to India to be recycled into yarn.

Yesha Patel founded After five years ago in Melbourne after a lockdown wardrobe clear-out revealed a gap in the market.

"I had a pile of stuff that was just too far gone and I didn't really know what I could do with it," she said.

"I looked online to see who could take this category of clothing and much to my surprise there was nothing there — and that's kind of when I found out more about the textile waste problem."

After now works with around 300 businesses across Australia and New Zealand, and offers Auckland households a pick-up service for excess fabric. Since launching, the company has collected 140 tonnes of material.

From wedding dresses to yarn

Among After's partners is Yours Truly Bridal in Auckland, which generates significant fabric waste through the dress-making process.

"There's always a lot of excess with the hems and that kind of thing, and also the designing process — we get lots of fabric samples and we can't use all of them," said store manager Mariska Jonker.

The bridal shop has been using After for nearly a year and estimates it has kept around 120kg of fabric out of landfill in that time.

Once collected, textiles are sorted, baled and shipped to a certified recycling facility in India.

"They take the textiles, shred them, turn them into a fluffy fibre and then that's spun into yarn again," Patel said.

"The output is recycled yarn and then that yarn is used for home furnishing — cushion covers, rugs, carpets, things like that."

Filling the gap for unsellable goods

Second-hand stores are also using the service for items that can't be sold. ReCircle, which displays goods on behalf of sellers, sends unsellable garments to After rather than the skip.

"What we deem unsellable — which is fortunately not very much because we sell about 30% — we will send to After for textile recycling," said ReCircle founder Henrik Stovring.

Patel says she hopes to expand the service nationwide to help address what she describes as a mounting problem. An estimated 180 tonnes of textile waste is sent to New Zealand landfills each year — much of it donated clothing that second-hand stores are unable to sell.