About

Founded in 1972, Bristol Textile Recyclers (BTR) Ltd is a family run business that diverts 20 tonnes of textiles from landfill daily. BTR help its retail charity partners fundraise for their beneficiaries by purchasing their unsellable donations including clothing and other textiles. BTR also helps other organisations to fundraise, by providing textile banks for their unwanted textiles. These organisations include schools, clubs, scouts & guides as well as other community groups.

Here's what happens to the textiles we collect...

View the full process

BTR has a team of 70 to thank for earning us such a great reputation in the textile recycling industry for friendliness and reliability. We cultivate a happy working environment to strengthen our foundation for success and focus on maintaining sustainability to secure our team and BTR’s future.

Meet our team

Benefits for our Environment

Textile re-use has significant benefits for our environment as it diverts our textile waste away from landfill and preserves the resources that would have been used to make the same garment again.

See below for more information as to why textile re-use is so important:

The majority of textiles thrown out by households end up in landfill, with Defra estimating that 1.5 million tonnes a year of unwanted clothing is eventually landfilled. (letsrecycle.com)

Textiles make up about 3% by weight of a household bin. At least 50% of the textiles we throw away are reuseable; however, the proportion of textile wastes reused or recycled annually in the UK is only around 25%. (waste online)

Over 70% of the world's population use second hand clothes. (Textiles on line)

The average lifetime of a garment is about three years. (Textiles on line)

Every kilogram of virgin cotton preserved by reusing second-hand clothing saves 65 kilowatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 32.5 kilograms of CO2. For polyester, the savings rise to 90 kilowatt-hours per kilogram. (New Scientist)