Reincarnation a matter of faith in textiles

ESTIMATES of the hidden waste within the fashion industry reveal a dirty little secret on the overconsumption at the heart of the current recycling crisis.

It’s estimated that Australians purchase more than 400,000 tonnes of clothing a year, or about 18 kilograms per person.

The average household owns about $8000 worth of clothes — but about 30 per cent of clothing in the average wardrobe has not been worn for at least a year, most commonly because it no longer fits.

The startling numbers were RECYCLING of textiles is going to the next level at Deakin University where materials are being designed knowing what they will become when they are reincarnated.

The Institute for Frontier Materials circular economy strategy lead Catherine McMahon said researchers were exploring how to turn end-of-life textiles into bone repair systems, used silk material into artificial blood vessels, waste material into fabric powder dyes and ordinarily discarded textile waste into leather interior alternatives for cars. presented to the Regional Innovation on a Circular Economy conference in Geelong by Peter Allen, a director of environmental consultancy Sustainable Resource Use.

Mr Allen, who thinks Geelong might offer a solution to the recycling crisis, said the fashion industry was one of the “dirtiest” in the world, from production of the fibre through to manufacture and its wasteful usage rate.

He said clothes were effectively becoming a “single use item”.

“As an example of unsustainability, churning through clothes at that rate is pretty astounding,” Mr Allen said.

“We are stockpiling clothing in ridiculous amounts.”

Ms McMahon said the “design out waste” thinking was critical to achieving a circular economy in which existing resources were continually reused.

“We’re in this recycling crisis because our current generation of materials were never designed to be recycled or repurposed,” she said.

By approaching the design of a material already knowing what it will become when it’s reincarnated, Ms McMahon believes that IFM scientists were forging a new wave of thought on waste management.

The estimate of clothing passed to another for reuse was 30 to 40 per cent while 95 per cent of donated clothing was exported.

“We can’t keep exporting our waste, or end-of-life goods,” Mr Allen said.

He said Australia, the second largest user of textiles in the world, was getting “significant pushback” on pushing its waste on to other countries to deal with.

Mr Allen’s blueprint for the future of textiles includes Australia following the lead of the SOEX group which operates the largest clothing recycling and reuse facility in the world in northern Germany.

The facility employs 750 staff who

“Circular economy should be the new mainstream benchmark, just as recycling was in the early 1970s,” Ms McMahon said.

“Beyond the scientific community, there’s still a lack of understanding about how much waste comes from the current recycling process.

“That’s why communal thinking needs to be underpinned with a circular approach.”

Part of the process of redesigning textiles for a circular economy is ensuring that the maximum worth of a material is maintained. recycle clothes into automotive felt, insulation or back into clothing.

“Somewhere in Australia we need to have a facility of this scale to serve the Asia Pacific region,” Mr Allen said,

“I can’t see any reason why it can’t be here (in Geelong).”

He said Victoria was the country’s fashion capital and Geelong was home to two international clothing brands, plus Deakin University which was leading research into the circular economy, and innovative recycling business GT Recycling,

“There are a lot of reasons why Geelong should grab this opportunity and replicate what is happening in the northern hemisphere,” Mr Allen said.

This approach is critical to addressing issues of pollution and waste around industries like fastfashion.

“Commonly found poly-cotton blends in clothing can be partially recycled, but the process leads to waste and devalues the material,” Ms McMahon said.

She said Deakin University researchers were designing materials that were made to separate once they were no longer fit for purpose so that all of the product was easily reused or biodegraded.