The Reverse Resources Platform Development
Reverse Resources is an SME founded in 2014 and headquartered in Estonia. Initially conceived as an online marketplace for leftover fabrics for upcycling designers, the company soon realised that the challenge within the global fashion value chain was not a lack of platforms, but the absence of reliable and traceable data on production waste, particularly cutting scraps.
For its first five years, the organisation operated largely as a research and mapping initiative, working with brands, factories, waste handlers and recyclers to understand where waste arose, in what quantities, how it was processed and why it often failed to reach textile-to-textile (T2T) recycling. They estimated that, even after process optimisation, over 25% of resources still spill out of original supply chains for a variety of reasons.
Building on this groundwork, Reverse Resources progressively developed a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform designed to digitally and transparently track textile waste along global fashion supply chains. This work evolved into today’s fully operational platform, which currently connects 1,211 manufacturers, 239 recyclers, 166 waste handlers and 18 global brands, monitoring their waste flows.

How the Reverse Resources Platform Supports Circularity
The platform connects actors across the textile ecosystem by creating a structured digital environment in which they can interact and share information. It digitally tracks waste as it moves from suppliers (organisations generating waste and providing detailed information on its composition, quality and origin), waste handlers performing fibre sorting, quality checks, volume aggregation or shredding, and recyclers producing recycled fibres or materials. This creates a comprehensive and continuously updated picture of available waste: its type, composition, volume and geographical distribution.

This visibility enables smarter matching between available waste and recyclers’ needs. With a global and constantly updated view of materials, recyclers can identify waste streams most closely aligned with their input requirements. Reverse Resources focuses particularly on diverting pre-consumer manufacturing waste with high potential for high-value textile-to-textile recycling, preventing it from being downcycled or landfilled.

Furthermore, through its backend logic, the platform helps users assess partners, verify data and determine the most suitable commercial or operational relationships, thus supporting informed decision-making throughout the matchmaking process.

Thanks to the company’s strong technical background and the potential of digitalisation, Reverse Resources absorbs much of the underlying complexity of waste-data management. This allows users to integrate the platform into their daily operations, making traceability a natural by-product rather than an administrative burden.

The Impact
The company collaborates with global brands such as H&M Group, C&A, Bestseller and PVH Corp. (Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger), as well as several other leading fashion companies, and it has established numerous partnerships across the ecosystem, for example with Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) through the Circular Fashion Partnership, and with Fashion for Good projects.

Overall, Reverse Resources has traced over 100,000 tonnes of textile waste through its platform, with around 50% successfully directed to textile-to-textile recycling (source: Fashion for Good). In 2022 alone, the platform helped nearly 4,000 tonnes of waste reach high-end textile-to-textile recycling.  

The service offered met a market need and this has allowed the company to grow: between 2019 and 2024 the number of employees almost tripled and revenue from service provision increased more than ten-fold. In parallel, the company is developing and adapting its tools for post-consumer waste streams with the aim of integrating them into future circular systems.

Conclusion
As textile-to-textile recycling technologies scale towards capacities of several hundred thousand tonnes per year, the demand for stable, high-quality feedstock is rising rapidly. Reverse Resources addresses this challenge at its origin. Beyond reporting, this real-time data infrastructure enhances decision-making and integrates with emerging systems such as Digital Product Passports (DPP) and GRS certification. Such digital foundations are essential not only for building an effective circular economy, but also for enabling broader Industry 4.0 applications.