Trucks are filled and driving from Skellefteå in the north to Malmö in the south with tons of clothes, sheets and other textiles that are sorted at a facility in Vilnius, Lithuania. Most of it is then sold in second hand stores in Europe, including in the Baltics and Ukraine.
– We can sort 130 to 140 tonnes per day and our staff knows what can be sold, says Dovile Stolyniene, Head of Export and import at Humana Lithuania, one of Europe’s largest sorting plants.
Broken cotton clothes become cloths, but the rest – what we threw in the trash can, for example old socks, is now accompanied to Lithuania.
– We have no use for a sock that is not in pairs or clothes with paint or oil on, says Örjan Österdal.
Textileberg grows in the municipalities
The municipalities do not know where to do everything. The textile mountains are growing at recycling stations around Sweden after the new rules were introduced on January 1st.
– We collaborate with 160 municipalities and most of it is sold to Lithuania, says Cristofer Ståhlgren, sales manager for Human Bridge which is the greatest on textile collection in Sweden.
Be fired up in Lithuania
So instead of burning up textile waste like garbage in Sweden, it is sent to Lithuania and fired up there in a cement factory. It is thus used as an energy source, just as we have done in Sweden before.
– It doesn’t have to be wrong to export textiles to other countries, but it would be better to have a serious sorting in Sweden because then we can avoid that combustible material leaves Sweden, says Birgitta Losman, sustainability strategist at the University in Borås.
In 2020, she was commissioned by the government to investigate how a producer responsibility for textiles should be designed. She has previously been active within the Environment Party.
– We have half legislation today with collection responsibilities that you have chosen to put on the municipalities, but you do not yet have a producer responsibility and this gap contributes to the fact that we have a textile mountain and have not solved the problem, says Birgitta Losman.