What and how much can still be worn, e.g. for relief deliveries, what can and may be sold as good, wearable secondhand clothes and what is suitable for recycling e.g. as cleaning cloths or for recycling? In order to answer these questions one needs to sort out old textiles - the finer, the better. Therefore, we sort out old textiles in our sorting plants and in the affiliated sorting plants of our European partners according to up to 250 criteria and indeed in handwork, as only the manual sorting ensures an optimum recycling! Up to 90% of old textiles collected by us flow back as commodities or raw material in the textile trade cycle. This releases the burden on our disposal sites and 250 hand-selected offers for the trade cycle are good contributions for the future.

Main groups in the sorting process:

Secondhand clothes constitute, depending on the quality of the collected goods, a share of approx. 50%. Examples for the various types are: Baby clothes, trousers, shirts, blouses, household textiles, jackets, coats, shoes etc.

Sorted according to requirements, use and quality, they are carefully packed, thus well protected, sold e.g. as "very good, hardly worn, fashionable clothing" on European markets. Or they are sent as "good, wearable clothing" by charitable associations in crisis and disaster regions all over the whole world or kept in own warehouses for disasters and as a donation for the needy.

We mainly produce cut-up cleaning cloths from clothing which can no longer be worn, mainly natural or absorbent synthetic fibres. For this purpose, approximately 15 - 20% of the old textiles are sorted out of the total volume and cut up into sizes to meet the demands.

Essential benefits of cleaning cloths made from old textiles lie in the high degree of absorbency and high strength. These goods are regularly pressed to large bales (200 - 500kg), only sorted and loaded according to the features of the fibre (contain wool and cotton). Depending on the requirements and the quality the goods are packed in sacks, small and large bales.

Recycling qualities with approximately 15 - 20% share of the total volume are sorted, for instance, pursuant to the trade cycle law according to: cloth, feathers, woollen articles.