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National textile recycling pilot
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National Circular Textiles Pilot concludes, with insights for all
REMONDIS Australia // April 2026
Australia Post's innovative National Circular Textiles Pilot launched in December 2025 and wrapped up in early 2026
The Pilot posed this question: What if recycling your old clothes was as easy as posting a parcel?
With the Pilot concluded, all the data has been collated, together with the experience and insights of participants and processing partners
INNOVATION
Back in September 2025 Australia Post, a long-time client of REMONDIS Australia's Integrated and Managed Services division (REMONDIS IMS), brought us in to help plan and then demonstrate what a potential circular solution might look like for textiles. A successful Circular Proof of Concept Showcase quickly led to Australia Post's National Circular Textiles's Pilot, supported by Seamless via the National Circular Clothing Textiles Fund, in which R.M.Williams offered recycling satchels to customers at point of purchase.
Each partner played a critical role in bringing the circular service together:
- R.M. Williams plays a pivotal role in consumer engagement as a trusted connector for customers seeking sustainable solutions. The brand expanded its service offering by providing circular satchels through its website and actively encouraging customers to participate in the trial.
- REMONDIS sorted the returned garments and ensures each item is directed to its best possible next use – whether reuse, re-manufacturing or recycling – while collecting the data needed to verify the circular pathway.
- BlockTexx transformed unwearable garments into recycled polyester and cellulose, creating new materials for manufacturing and agricultural applications.
iQRenew supported the creation of the circular satchels using Australian-made recycled resin pellets and recycles the used satchels back into pellets for re-manufacture.
This National Circular Textiles Pilot has now concluded, and there is a lot to talk about. View the video, read the transcript and hear from Australia Post, right here.
Here’s how Australia Post’s Chief Sustainability Officer Richard Pittard wrapped-up the project on LinkedIn, in April 2026:
What if recycling your old clothes was as easy as posting a parcel? That’s the question behind Australia Post’s National Circular Textiles Pilot – a real world test of a closed loop “satchel as a service” model, built to make participation simple and to prove end to end traceability across a circular textiles value chain.
A few things we learned:
- Demand lifts when it feels familiar and effortless: 672 Circular Satchels were added to 635 online orders in two weeks.
- Design + data matter: unique QR codes on the Circular Stachel were essential to verify end-to-end processing pathways back to the brand owner and customer order. This builds trust.
Value retention is real: from the satchels returned in the primary dataset, 24% of garments were suitable for reuse (including recommerce), with the balance suitable for chemical or mechanical recycling.
The bigger takeaway for me: if Australia sends 220,000 tonnes of clothing textiles to landfill each year, scaling solutions will depend as much on trust, incentives, and convenience as it does on recycling technology.
Huge thanks to R.M. Williams, BlockTexx, REMONDIS, iQRenew and our team members for their commitment and partnership – and to Seamless for their support through the Seamless Circular Clothing Textiles Fund. One step closer to enabling a circular economy for all Australians.
Watch the National Circular Textiles Pilot in action, step by step. Scroll down for a transcript of this video.
And here's a transcript from the video:
Marty Rowell, Head of Circularity & Decarbonisation – Australia Post: At Australia Post, we have a bold ambition to make circularity simple, accessible, and scalable across Australia.
Richard Pittard, Chief Sustainability Officer – Australia Post: Our circular clothing service pilot with RM Williams is a great example of circularity in action. Using our innovative purpose design satchel, customers were able to return clothing that they no longer wanted through the Australia Post network.
Faina Kerr, Circular Innovation Partner – Australia Post: This pilot was made possible with support from the seamless circular clothing textiles fund and delivered with RM Williams and partners including BlockTexx, REMONDIS and iQRenew.
Megan Priest, Senior Manager, Strategy – R.M. Williams: During this pilot program, when a customer is searching on our website, they will get to the checkout with their item in the bag and they'll be offered recycle with R.M. Williams. If they select this item, it will add a circular satchel to their outgoing order.
Faina Kerr: We're proud to introduce the circular satchel, an innovation and first for Australia Post.
Danial Gallagher, Chief Executive Officer – iQRenew: To make these satchels, we have collected commonly wasted soft plastics from Australian households and process them at our large scale spec facility. Once the satchel has completed its journey, it is collected and returned back to this facility where it is recycled once again.
Ben Hope, General Manager NSW – REMONDIS: Once the satchels move through the postal network, they're delivered to REMONDIS for receivable and sorting. Our teams open the satchels, they assess the contents, and then sort the textiles into defined pathways so the material can be reused or recovered appropriately.
Adrian Jones, CEO and Co-Founder – BlockTexx: When the product leaves REMONDIS, its first protocol will be to go to one of our decommissioning partners. We will take the garments that are deemed to be unwarable and we will use our chemical process to break those down into polyester and cellulose polyex and Celtex and then the polyex will go onwards and go back into garments and the cell takes will be used onshore for various agricultural or industrial uses.
Danielle Kent, General Manager Industry Transformation – Seamless: Working with Australia Post to link everyone together has been an absolute game-changer in terms of being the conduit to enable the full circular solution. It is exciting to work with Australia Post so that at Seamless we can understand what is possible as we are building a national clothing system into the future.
Richard Pittard: We're proud to have partnered with such committed brands and stakeholders and we're excited about what comes next as we continue to deliver for the future.
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