Recycling clothing, like we recycle trends
Brands trying to improve supply chain criticized for beefing up landfills
Sustainability in the fashion industry was once the focus of only a handful of designers like Stella McCartney and outdoor gear companies such as Patagonia.
But traditional and new brands are trying to improve a supply chain increasingly criticized for contributing to landfills and causing other forms of pollution throughout the manufacturing process.
From collaborating on the creation of biofibres to the manufacturing of environmentally friendly tag fasteners, some in the apparel sector are working with technology startups to clean up the world’s closets.
The biggest problem rests with the volume of unwanted clothing that winds up in landfills. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works to foster sustainability, clothing production globally roughly doubled from 2000 to 2015. During the same period, the number of times a garment was worn declined by 36 per cent. All told, “the equivalent of one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill every second,” their report found.
Over roughly the same period, according to the World Economic Forum, 60 per cent more garments were purchased, but consumers kept them for only half as long.
But some companies, like H&M, are trying to increase their own sustainability while also encouraging consumers to keep garments out of the trash. At H&M’s flagship store in Stockholm, for example, customers can pay a nominal amount to have unwanted clothing transformed into new garments through a process that breaks down the old fibres and combines them with new ones.
The eight-step process is designed to make a point, not a profit. “We want to engage our customers and make them understand that their own garments hold value,” said Pascal Brun, H&M’s head of sustainability.
But traditional mechanical recycling that is in wider use has its limits. “As shiny as the fashion industry is on the outside,
the supply chain has often relied on 19th-century equipment,” said Stacy Flynn, the founder of Evrnu, a startup based in Seattle, Wash. Companies like Flynn’s seek to reduce fibres to their basic chemical components and build them back up with less impact.
Evrnu’s first product, which Flynn said she hoped would become commercially available this year, converts the cotton in garments to lyocell, a cellulose fibre that is now made only from wood.
The process, called NuCycl, will update the initial recycling step of sorting, grading and shredding fabric by adding a camera that can more accurately identify a fabric’s composition. Decorative trim, the content of the label or even the
thread used can reduce the cotton content by as much as 20 per cent.
The heart of the technology lies in the next step, at the pulp mill, where the shredded fabric is dissolved and turned into pulp. That pulp becomes a thick paper, to be shipped to the next part of the textile supply chain, the fibre producers. There it is repolymerized to make lyocell.
Another area of interest involves new fibres and materials that rely on products that are found in nature but not derived from animals.
Several companies, for example, are developing alternatives to leather, since hides are particularly problematic, from the methane-producing cows that produce it to tanning methods that often involve toxic chemicals like chromium. Vegan leather, despite its environmentally friendly name, is no better because it uses plastic, said Theanne Schiros, a materials scientist and an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. One alternative is mushroom leather, which relies on mycelium or mushroom roots, to produce an animal-free alternative.
In addition to Bolt Threads, a fibre and material producer that gained attention last fall when it announced its product and collaboration with several designers, others companies, like MycoWorks, are developing “leathers” from mycelium.
MycoWorks’ chief executive, Matthew Scullin, said that while the company was exploring uses in automotive upholstery, the current emphasis was on apparel and footwear.
Schiros is part of a team at Columbia University working on a bioleather alternative; the latest prototype, she said, is “a naturally dyed, microbe-grown sneaker that is a part of Slow Factory’s One x One initiative,” referring to the non-profit that works on sustainability and climate issues.
Schiros has worked as well on an algae-based yarn also begun at the school, which is part of the State University of New York. Research is done in collaboration with Columbia, where Schiros has a research scientist appointment.