World Cleanup Day in 2025 will focus on pollution from the fashion industry for the first time.

On September 20, a series of activities for World Cleanup Day 2025 were launched simultaneously in many parts of the country. The global theme this year was "5% Action, 100% Impact". Building on the traditional environmental protection practice of "collecting and cleaning up by all", this year's activities extended the focus to the environmental impact of the fashion industry for the first time.

As the general coordinating agency for World Cleanup Day in China, Pick Up China has launched the "Textile Waste Recycling Advocacy Program" to promote environmental protection efforts from "end-of-pipe cleanup" to "source reduction and resource recycling," filling the previous gap in industrial-level environmental issues for World Cleanup Day.

In response to this year's World Cleanup Day theme of "reducing textile waste," the main event in Shanghai has partnered with an environmental protection platform to set up a task for recycling used clothing, linking "ocean cleanup" with "clothing recycling" to create a more relatable environmental practice scenario for participants, extending waste reduction efforts from beach picking to daily household life.

Textile production is highly dependent on primary resources such as cotton and petroleum. Promoting the recycling of waste textiles can alleviate the textile industry's problems of "high water consumption and high energy consumption." More importantly, if waste textiles are disposed of through traditional landfill or incineration, they not only occupy a large amount of land resources but also release greenhouse gases, while recycling can reduce the environmental burden from the end-of-pipe treatment stage.

Data from the United Nations Environment Programme shows that recycling one ton of old clothing can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3.6 tons, save 0.5 tons of crude oil, and conserve 20 tons of water. However, the rise of the "fast fashion" business model in recent years has fostered a consumer habit of "frequent purchases and rapid disposal," directly leading to a rapid increase in global waste textiles.

In the initial recruitment for the "Environmental Pioneer Action," 20% of the participating teams have focused their efforts on community clothing recycling and repurposing, forming a preliminary model of "public participation and industrial waste reduction."

"The fashion industry has become the world's second-largest polluter, and its environmental costs far exceed public awareness," said Wang Ziren, the general coordinator for World Cleanup Day in China. He pointed out that every second, a whole truckload of clothing is sent to landfills globally. Of the microplastic pollution flowing into the ocean, 11% comes from textile industry waste, making it the third-largest contributor to microplastics.

This year's main event in Shanghai used primarily recycled materials, reinforcing the "zero waste" practice. On-site signage was made from recycled driftwood, participant task cards were made from recycled paper left over from previous charity events, and finisher medals were eco-friendly products made from recycled plastic bottle caps, achieving "zero new waste" from the source. Furthermore, instead of using printed fabric as a backdrop, the event used cyanotype fabric and canvas, which can be reused as tablecloths and placemats.