ReFiber’s Navi Mumbai pilot recovers 2.7 tonnes of post-consumer textiles
ReFiber, powered by OterRi, has released a white paper on its Navi Mumbai textile-circularity pilot, which logged 275 collection orders via 15 laundry partners. The model is planned for expansion across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Maharashtra and nationally.
What happened
ReFiber, powered by OterRi, launched a white paper detailing its Navi Mumbai textile-waste collection pilot. The project recovered 2.7 tonnes through laundry
Key facts
- 2.7 tonnes of post-consumer textiles recovered
- 275 collection orders
- 257 citizens engaged
- 15 laundry partners
- 28 branches
- six barriers to textile circularity
Why this matters
Laundry networks, waste-management firms, recyclers and apparel brands could view ReFiber’s model as a partnership route to build compliant textile take-back infrastructure across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and beyond.
What to watch
- Collection volume per laundry partner and repeat-order rate after the initial pilot period.
- Cost per kilogram collected, transported, sorted and processed versus resale or recycled-fiber value.
- Share of collected textiles reaching reuse, fiber-to-fiber recycling, downcycling and disposal.
- New recycler capacity, recycling offtake agreements or investment in textile sorting infrastructure in Maharashtra.
- Partnership announcements with apparel chains, marketplaces, housing societies, hospitality groups or institutional-linen operators.
- Any Indian extended producer responsibility, recycled-content, waste-traceability or textile-waste policy developments.
- Evidence that informal waste workers are integrated into, displaced by or competing with the formal collection network.
- Secure contracted offtake with fiber-to-fiber recyclers, rag manufacturers and nonwoven producers before scaling collection volumes.
- Publish material-level outcomes: reuse, recycling, downcycling, rejects, contamination rates and end destinations.
- Add apartment societies, corporate campuses, hotels and fashion retailers alongside laundry partners to improve collection density.
- Use incentives such as laundry credits, retailer coupons or pickup bundles to raise repeat participation and reduce customer-acquisition costs.
- Standardize chain-of-custody, sorting grades and digital proof of processing to make the model usable for brand sustainability reporting.
- Prioritize high-volume, relatively uniform streams such as uniforms, linens and cotton-rich garments to improve unit economics.