Recycling strategies have been used by the textile industry since the industrial revolution. Traditional strategies include reprocessing of hard and soft waste from spinning, reusing hard fabric waste from fabric and apparel manufacturing, making new rags from unused fabrics, and making old rags from used fabrics. More recent recycling strategies include the production of manmade fibers from polymer wastes, the depolymerization of process and consumer waste, fiber production from such nonfiber polymer sources as polyethylene terephthalate bottles, and the recycling of high performance materials from apparel, industrial fabrics, and composites. Future recycling efforts in the European Union will be influenced by environmental, political, and economic factors. The interplay of these factors obscures the future of the European recycling industry and makes the formulation of predictive models difficult. It is clear, however, that the large quantity of textile waste disposed of each year represents an exciting opportunity for the fabric recycling industry. 9 refs.