Turkey is turning used clothing collection into a national public service. The latest special action under the country's 'Zero Waste' initiative has deployed textile recycling bins at all branches of the state-owned postal operator PTT. From Istanbul to the Anatolian hinterland, residents can now drop off idle garments while sending letters or picking up packages.
Background: From First Lady's Initiative to National Logistics Network
The 'Zero Waste' project was launched in 2017 by Turkey's First Lady Emine Erdogan, with the core goal of reducing waste generation, promoting source separation, and improving resource reuse efficiency. Over the past six years, the initiative remained largely at the policy advocacy and pilot stage. The partnership with PTT marks its transition into full-scale infrastructure deployment.
Samed Agirbas, Chairman of the Zero Waste Foundation, revealed that collected garments first go through information registration before being transported to processing centers. Workers sort items by category, fabric, condition, and reusability, followed by disinfection. Wearable garments are distributed to disadvantaged groups through social aid channels; textiles no longer suitable for wearing enter the regeneration process.
As a closed-loop design, partner companies donate new garments to the foundation for distribution to those in need. Agirbas described this as 'a social circular economy model with public welfare attributes.' This design bridges commercial sustainability and social assistance while offering participating companies positive brand reputation returns in terms of corporate social responsibility.
Industry Impact: From Voluntary Corporate Efforts to National Systemic Action
From an industry perspective, the value of Turkey's move lies not in technological breakthroughs but in the path to large-scale implementation. The global textile industry generates approximately 92 million tons of waste annually, with less than 1% being closed-loop recycled into new products. Used-clothing recycling has long been bottlenecked by insufficient collection network coverage and limited backend sorting capacity.
Turkey's approach offers a low-cost, high-coverage solution by leveraging existing state-owned postal outlets. Postal systems inherently feature high density, broad coverage, and standardized operations. Embedding collection bins into this network incurs almost zero additional space costs. This is more sustainable than relying on brand store collections or community volunteer points, and more efficient than government-built recycling stations.
For China's textile industrial clusters, this model holds reference value. China Post has over 50,000 outlets covering virtually all county-level administrative regions. If used-textile recycling could tap into this network, its reach would far exceed current methods based on community recycling cabinets and brand stores. Of course, backend sorting and regeneration technologies remain key bottlenecks.