Building India’s Green Economy: Valorising Pre-Consumer Textile Waste in Indian textile Ecosystem
India’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision positions the green economy as a central engine of growth, resilience, and global competitiveness. CEEW’s flagship research, “Building a Green Economy for Viksit Bharat :New Opportunities for Jobs, Growth and Sustainability in India”, estimates that a green economy can unlock USD 1.1 trillion (INR 97.7 lakh crore) in market value, generate 48 million jobs, and mobilise USD 4.1 trillion (INR 360 lakh crore) in investments by 2047.
Within this, the circular economy alone can contribute 8.4 million jobs, USD 132 billion in market opportunity, and USD 125 billion in investments, with solid waste and material recovery forming the backbone of this employment potential. Yet, several high-potential circular value chains remain underexplored and underquantified.
One such opportunity is pre-consumer textile waste—manufacturing scraps, cutting waste, deadstock, and unsold inventory generated across India’s vast textile and apparel ecosystem. India, the second largest textile producer in the world, generates 7.8 million tonnes of textile waste annually, of which 42 per cent is pre-consumer textile waste. The majority of this waste is mismanaged, resulting in severe environmental impacts, increased social inequity, and significant economic losses thereby representing a significant loss of material value, jobs, and emissions abatement potential.
This session proposes to treat pre-consumer textile waste as a green value chain, akin to those analysed in the Viksit Bharat report, and initiate a structured, ecosystem-led exercise to estimate its Jobs, Market, and Investment (JMI) potential—along with its emissions reduction impact. By convening leading industry players, recyclers, innovators, policymakers, and ecosystem enablers, the session aims to generate the first collective, India-wide perspective on the scale of opportunity embedded in this value chain.
The objective is to move from fragmented interventions to a system-level understanding:
How large can pre-consumer textile circularity become? What will it take to scale it? And what does it mean for India’s green economy ambitions?
This event is convened by ANDE and is part of the Innovation for Circularity Summit, hosted under the EU-India Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy Initiative (EU-IRECEI), implemented by GIZ India and Climate Collective Foundation. It is an official side event of WSDS and is being hosted as part of Delhi Climate Innovation Week.
Session objective
To discuss and understand the key drivers of Jobs, Market, and Investment (JMI) potential for the pre-consumer textile waste value chain in India and identify the key constraints and enablers required to scale it as a pillar of India’s circular economy.