In Germany, Bavarian recycling start-up TURNS is a company that was founded in April 2023 to enable a textile circular economy. Co-founder Katja Wagner explains that the startup accepts used textiles, sorts them and sends them to the appropriate recycling technologies. Companies that join the “TURNS fiber cycle” contribute to the material recycling of old clothing and enable textile production with significantly lower resource consumption.

The South Tyrolean industrial laundries Haas and Wabes (part of the Lavantex group) are supporting  the start-up, as other companies such as the Textiles Rental company DBL Merk. According to Katja Wagner the participating laundries have an ecological alternative to incineration, demonstrate compliance with the waste pyramid and are pioneers for the legal requirements regarding the EU Green Deal and the partnership can also affect the laundry business cost-effectively. Jens-Uwe Müller states that although sustainability is not always immediately economical, in the future disposal will become more and more expensive.

Katja Wagner states that in current business practices used textiles are considered a worthless raw material. A new way of thinking about costs is needed here. In the future, recycling technologies will ensure that used textiles can be used as valuable materials. However, a lot of development is needed to get there.