The UK Government has launched a £4.7 million fund to drive up the recycling of textiles at the end of their life.

Organisations can to apply for funding as part of a scheme to reduce textile and plastic packaging waste. For textiles this could include machinery for recycling textiles, technology for disassembling or sorting textiles, automated processes for removing items from textiles such as zips, and technology to sort textiles by fibre type and colour.

Companies can find out more information below.

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Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said: “We are committed to going further and faster to reduce, reuse, recycle and cut waste. Valuable waste ending up in landfill makes no sense environmentally or economically.

“We are making progress but there is more to do, and I encourage organisations to apply for our multi-million pound grant to drive-up the recycling of these valuable materials”.

The announcement builds on the government’s Resources and Waste Strategy, which sees textiles as a key priority area for action. You can read more about the strategy – which aims to ensure that businesses and manufacturers pay the full cost of recycling or disposing of their waste – here.

WRAP will be funding projects of between £200,000 and £1 million.

Candidates will be shortlisted based on the following criteria:

• Eligibility of applicant and project location
• Eligibility of project activity
• Ability to deliver the project, demonstrating timescales and experience
• Potential project impact, including proposed monitoring

In 2015, there were 300,000 tonnes of clothing in the UK going to landfill or incineration. The European Clothing Action Plan, led by WRAP, aims to divert over 90,000 tonnes of clothing waste from landfill and incineration across Europe by December 2019.