Enviu's Devansh Peshin on India's Textile Waste Market
11 Jul 2026
India generates 70.73 lakh tonnes of textile waste every year, according to a Ministry of Textiles report — a slice of a 92 million ton global problem. Yet only 2% of that waste currently enters recycling pathways, with 55-70% ending up in landfills or incinerators. Devansh Peshin, Regional Program Manager at Enviu, is working to close that gap by building markets and jobs around textile waste across India's manufacturing clusters.
Enviu, headquartered in the Netherlands with programs across Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa, has partnered with seven MSMEs working in textile waste management across 14 cities, including major clusters like Tiruppur, Karur, and Panipat. Panipat, notably, recycles textile imports from the EU, US, Korea, and Japan — a reminder that India's textile-waste economy already has global reach.
The numbers behind the model
According to Enviu's reported figures, its work has diverted 4.4 million kg of textile waste and created 2,900 green jobs, roughly 95% of them for women. Currently, only 39% of textile waste generates positive value for waste-management enterprises. Peshin's team is focused on pushing that number higher.
The stakes are significant: the textile-recycling market is projected to reach $3.5 billion by 2031, per the Ministry of Textiles. If the share of post-consumer waste converted to value rises from 39% to 55%, that shift could generate around one lakh new green jobs, according to the report.
Policy, not just capital, is the bottleneck
Peshin pointed to taxation parity between recycled and virgin textile products as a key pain point — virgin products benefit from 50 years of efficiency built into their ecosystem, giving them a structural advantage over recycled alternatives. Notably, Peshin stated there is "no shortage of capital now," suggesting that funding is not the primary constraint holding back the sector's growth.
That said, scale remains a challenge. Enviu's model has proven itself in 14 cities, but over 100 cities remain untouched — a gap that points to how early-stage the broader infrastructure and market-building effort still is relative to the scale of India's waste problem.
Why founders should care
- The wide gap between waste generated (70.73 lakh tonnes annually) and waste recycled (just 2%) likely signals a large, underserved addressable market for waste-management and circular-economy startups.
- Peshin's comment on capital availability may indicate that fundraising friction in this space could be lower than founders might expect — though this is one perspective, not a market-wide guarantee.
- Policy advocacy, particularly around tax parity for recycled versus virgin products, could matter as much as product or technology innovation for founders building in this category.
- The 100+ cities still untouched by existing models suggest meaningful room for geographic expansion, particularly for teams with replicable operating playbooks.
- Job-creation data — 2,900 jobs with about 95% going to women — could serve as a strong social-impact metric for founders pitching to impact-focused investors.
What's missing
The report does not specify the timeframe over which Enviu achieved its 4.4 million kg diversion and 2,900-job figures, nor does it name the seven MSME partners beyond their cluster locations. There's also no detail on how the projected one lakh new green jobs figure was calculated, no information on Enviu's funding sources or revenue model, and no elaboration on what other policy changes Peshin may be advocating for beyond tax parity. Founders evaluating this space should treat these figures as directional rather than fully audited.
Peshin's comments were shared as part of MSME Sparks 2026, a five-day YourStory event spotlighting India's MSME ecosystem.