Chapter 6 — full chapter
HUMANA Spain
At Humana’s Leganés plant in Spain, workers inspect donated textiles item by item and assign them to more than 85 categories according to condition, product type and destination. Good-quality garments may enter Spanish shops or international second-hand markets; other fractions go to recycling or disposal. Humana reports that 62% of the textiles it sorts are suitable for reuse, illustrating that collection is not the same as recycling.
LIPOR’s Portuguese pilot similarly separates items with reuse potential before classifying the remaining textiles for recovery. Together, the cases show why skilled manual assessment, consistent grading, market knowledge and reliable data are essential. A recovery system needs destinations for every output stream, not only a collection point, and its performance should be reported by verified route and quality.
Sources: Humana reporting; PICVISA.