World Cleanup Day 2025: Textile and fashion waste

Every second, a garbage truck full of clothes is dumped in a landfill or burned. The fashion industry generates 92 million tonnes of textile waste each year, overwhelming waste systems, polluting waterways, and fuelling the climate crisis.

On 20 September 2025, people around the world unite for World Cleanup Day – a global movement that goes beyond picking up trash to confront the waste crisis head-on. This year’s focus is on textile and fashion waste, one of the most visible and fast-growing environmental challenges.

Tackling the growing textile waste crisis

World Cleanup Day 2025 highlights the urgent need to raise awareness and shift habits toward responsible consumption, strengthen local and global waste management systems, and advance policies and partnerships that build urban resilience.

Why it matters

Textile waste fuels the triple planetary crisis: it clogs drains and worsens urban floods, pollutes rivers and oceans, harms biodiversity, and releases greenhouse gases that drive climate change.

By tackling textile waste, World Cleanup Day moves cities closer to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.