The closet that no longer closes completely, that pile of clothes that we no longer wear but that we can't bring ourselves to throw away. And yet, the simplest solution may be found a few hundred meters from your home, in the form of a simple collection point.
According to the 2024 annual report from Refashion, the official eco-organization responsible for the textile industry in France, 3.5 billion new textile products were put on sale in the country that year, representing nearly 900,000 tonnes. Faced with this colossal volume, only 289,393 tonnes of end-of-life products were collected to be reused or recycled. A gap which is reflected very concretely in our trash: according to a national awareness campaign launched by Refashion in May 2026, 649,000 tons of textiles, clothing and shoes end up directly in French household waste each year, or around 9.8 kg per inhabitant per year.
The most revealing figure from this study has less to do with the tonnages than with the reasons given: 59% of French people say they have already thrown clothes in the trash rather than putting them in a collection channel. Refashion points to a lack of information rather than a lack of good will: many simply do not know that a terminal is near their home, or think, wrongly, that a damaged, holed or mismatched item of clothing has no place in these circuits. However, contrary to this widely accepted idea, all used textiles, whatever their condition, can be recovered in one way or another: reuse, recycling into industrial rags, or transformation into new materials.

What this task actually involves

Sorting through clothes to sell or donate involves going through your wardrobe, identifying the pieces you no longer wear, and distributing them among several possible destinations: resale, community donation, or deposit at a collection point for items that are too damaged. Allow around 30 minutes for a sorting session, a time which varies depending on the volume of the wardrobe and the level of sorting already carried out previously.

Tips and tricks for efficient sorting

Never assume that a piece of clothing with holes, stains or out of fashion has no place in collection: this is precisely the central message of the Refashion campaign, which insists on the fact that everything can be collected, even a mismatched sock. Clothes that are too damaged to be resold are automatically sent to material recycling or the manufacture of industrial rags, rather than being thrown away purely and simply.
For pieces still in good condition, resale on second-hand platforms constitutes a relevant first option, particularly for branded or rarely worn clothing. For everything else, textile collection terminals, whose territorial coverage today exceeds 47,000 points in France, offer a simple and quick solution, without requiring extensive prior sorting on the part of the individual.
Locating the nearest terminal generally takes less time than you might imagine: most management associations (Le Relais, Emmaüs, Red Cross) offer interactive maps online, allowing you to locate the collection point most accessible from your home in just a few clicks.

With 59% of French people still throwing their textiles in the trash according to Refashion, often due to simple ignorance of existing solutions, regular sorting of the closet is not just a question of storage space. It is also an opportunity to give a real second life to clothes which, without this gesture, would simply end up incinerated or buried.