Analysis of Clothes and Textile Waste Classification System to Facilitate a Circular Economy in the Fashion Industry

With the expansion of fast fashion brands" market share and the development of communication technology, consumers can purchase the latest fashion anytime, anywhere, at low prices. Although the figures vary depending on the research institutes, the global annual clothing consumption is expected to increase to about 100 million tons by 2030. Severe environmental problems are predicted to be exacerbated due to resource depletion, wastewater, and landfill. This study aims to investigate the generation quantity of clothes and textile waste and the type of waste treatment, including recycling, landfill, and incineration, to reduce clothes and textile waste to facilitate the fashion industry"s transition to a circular economy. This study employs the waste generation and treatment data provided by the Korea Resource Recirculation Information System and the import and export trade data of the Korea Customs Service. Descriptive analysis and year-over-year comparative analysis are used to analyze the data. As a result, clothes and textile waste accounts for a small proportion of total waste, but the generation rate is rapidly increasing. In addition, the amount of used clothes exported was more than 2.5 times greater than the sum of the amount of domestic waste and the amount of imported used clothes. It can be interpreted as the aggregated collection amount, not the currently reported generation quantity of clothes waste. In particular, conceptual ambiguity exists in the current waste management legislation, which can be explicitly reused as a circulating resource. Establishing mechanisms and legislation frameworks and policies for the source, generation quantity, and treatment of clothes and textile waste, the future resource of the circular economy, is a task that the Korean fashion industry must first address.