More than 130 exhibitors will descend on Brussels Expo this week as the Textiles Recycling Expo returns for its second edition, a sign of how quickly Europe’s textile waste problem has moved from a niche sustainability concern to an industry-defining challenge.
The free-to-attend exhibition and conference, running June 24-25, brings together recyclers, manufacturers, technology providers, and retailers at a moment when new European Union regulations are forcing the textile sector to confront what happens to clothing after it is discarded. Global textile production has nearly tripled since 1975, and a growing share of that output is now landfill-bound or incinerated — a trend regulators in Brussels are determined to reverse.
The event will run alongside the Future Fabrics Expo, pairing recycling technology with sustainable fashion sourcing in what organizers describe as an effort to connect the full supply chain in one venue.
Following what organizers called a strong debut in 2025, this year’s expo has expanded its exhibitor list and conference programming. The show floor will feature companies including NewRetex, Valvan, Worn Again Technologies and Reverse Fashion, alongside live demonstrations of sorting, shredding and fiber-recovery machinery. One highlighted exhibit, the Mesdan Laboratory Shredding Machine, will demonstrate how industrial textile waste and worn clothing can be mechanically broken back down into raw fibers — a process at the heart of so-called fiber-to-fiber recycling.
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Technology providers are also expected to show off material-identification systems. Konica Minolta, for instance, plans to present hyperspectral imaging technology paired with artificial intelligence designed to automate sorting and improve recovery rates at industrial scale, addressing one of the recycling sector’s persistent bottlenecks: knowing exactly what a garment is made of before deciding what to do with it.
The expo’s timing follows a string of EU regulatory moves aimed at the textile industry. Brussels has been tightening rules around packaging and extended producer responsibility, pressuring brands and recyclers alike to build out the infrastructure needed for large-scale textile collection and processing. Industry groups including the Landbell Group’s textiles division are returning to the event after what they described as a successful presence last year, citing the regulatory shift as a driver of renewed engagement.
The conference program, running in parallel with the exhibition, is billed as a forum for industry leaders and policymakers to discuss regulatory developments and scalable recycling strategies — a sign that the conversation in Brussels has moved beyond pilot projects toward questions of how to build recycling capacity that can match the scale of Europe’s textile consumption.
The Brussels event is also part of a broader expansion strategy. A sister event, Textiles Recycling Expo USA, launched in Charlotte, North Carolina, in April, marking what organizers called North America’s first dedicated exhibition focused exclusively on textile recycling. That event drew speakers from brands including Eileen Fisher and Lululemon, alongside recycling technology firms, suggesting that the model pioneered in Brussels is being replicated as pressure to address textile waste spreads beyond Europe.
For an industry still searching for cost-effective ways to recycle blended fabrics — a far harder technical problem than recycling single-material textiles — this week’s expo will be watched closely for signs of commercial, not just experimental, progress. Investors and policymakers alike are looking for evidence that sorting and fiber-recovery technologies showcased on the exhibition floor can scale beyond demonstration projects into industrial deployment.
With attendance free and open to the full value chain — from waste managers to fashion retailers — organizers are positioning the event as a meeting point for an industry under growing pressure to prove that circularity in fashion is more than a marketing slogan.
The Textiles Recycling Expo runs June 24-25 at Brussels Expo, Place de Belgique 1, Brussels.
