Reju, a leading Paris-based textile-to-textile regeneration company, leveraged the global stage of Climate Week NYC 2025 to debut an innovative augmented reality (AR) initiative spotlighting the enormous scale and impact of worldwide textile waste. Launched on September 22, the campaign overlays towering virtual “mountains” of discarded textiles against the Empire State Building and Flatiron Building, bringing home the reality that over 92 million tons of textile waste are generated annually.
AR at Climate Week: Visualizing the Textile Crisis
Throughout Climate Week, New Yorkers encounter Reju’s QR code signage at major venues and public spaces. Scanning a code leads them to a microsite, where pointing a phone camera at either landmark activates an AR filter. As users swipe, they visualize how much textile waste is produced globally every second, minute, hour, and day—each represented as a massive pile dwarfing the New York skyline.
This approach delivers a “visceral sense of the…
industry’s impact,” making the waste both tangible and deeply shareable. Reju’s CEO, Patrik Frisk, explains: “Reju’s AR experience brings the invisible textile waste problem into sharp focus, right in the middle of New York City during a week when climate is top of mind. It’s a wake-up call, but also a glimpse of hope.
This is the very waste Reju is designed to transform, turning discarded textiles into high-quality materials and closing the loop in fashion and beyond”.
Stats and Solutions: The Textile Waste Challenge According to the Textile Exchange, the world discards about 92 million tons of textile waste per year, the vast majority incinerated or buried in landfills, making fashion one of the most resource- and waste-intensive industries.
Only about 20% of global textile waste is reused or recycled, with less than 1% made into new clothing—a circularity gap that contributes to pollution and climate change. Textile waste’s raw material value is estimated at over $150 billion per year, yet most is lost due to inadequate infrastructure and recycling options…
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