In the distant past, old clothes used to be gathered and turned into rag paper [1]. It's a shame that we use so many synthetics now as that probably drastically reduces the re-usability.
Perhaps we could add the funguses that decompose plastics into the mix and create a full-circle clothing-to-paper or fabric process.
This makes the song[1] by the White stripes make so much more sense. I didn't realize rag and bone man was a particular thing, I thought it was just something similar to what was called a gypsie lifestyle or similar in the past.
I believe this is also the real reason why newspapers are sometimes called "rags" - although now it's been retconned into a a derogatory term. Cotton paper was way more expensive than pure wood-pulp paper, and far superior to it in terms of clarity, resolution of printed material, and durability.
Perhaps we could add the funguses that decompose plastics into the mix and create a full-circle clothing-to-paper or fabric process.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag-and-bone_man