By comparison, Norwegians generated around 6.5 million tonnes of waste all told last year. The amount of textile waste in Norway has remained relatively stable throughout the 1990s. In 1998, nearly 75 per cent of textile waste came from households, with clothing making up 40 per cent of the total amount. Two-thirds of the waste landed in dumps in 1996. Textiles cover natural or synthetic fibres and various mixtures of these, as well as products made of such fibres.
Raw materials are for example wool, cotton, silk, linen, cellulose and oil.
The manufacture of textiles is a resource-intensive process and generates emissions to air and water. Increased reuse and recycling of textile waste, which today ends up in the dump, could reduce energy consumption and pollution. The primary household textile waste is clothing. Manufacturing accounted for 10 per cent, fishing, whaling and aquaculture for seven per cent and the rest of the industries, of which service industries make up the majority, accounted for eight per cent of the total amount of waste in 1998. The trend is that the households total amounts of waste and also the share of textile waste have increased steadily, while the manufacturing and service industries' share has fallen.