Recycling making a material difference
A Wellington company tackling a global textile problem that is often swept under the rug is looking to expand.
The Formary, founded by Bernadette Casey and Peter Thomson, takes clothing destined for the rubbish heap, and turns it into reusable fabrics and textiles.
‘‘We deal with end-of life-textiles, so we are at the unglamorous end of fashion,’’ Casey said.
Textile waste was growing exponentially, and more than threequarters of it was ending up in landfill or being incinerated, she said.
The rest was given to charities or exported.
However, some East African countries had begun banning imports of second-hand clothes because it decimated the textile industry and was a big environmental issue, she said.
‘‘They are just getting flooded with clothing from the West, and you know, cheap dyes and toxic finishes [and] instead of it going to a landfill where it’s contained, it just gets dumped on the side of rivers.
‘‘Ninety per cent of textiles can be reused, but they are just on a one-way road to landfill and the majority of that, I’d say, would be polyester, and that takes hundreds of years to break down.
‘‘It’s a huge environmental problem and a major issue within the clothing supply chain.’’
To tackle the problem, The Formary has started a textile re-use programme, advising New Zealand corporates on the best fabrics to use for their uniforms. Some of the companies it works with are Air New Zealand, New Zealand Post, SkyCity, The Warehouse Group, and Fonterra.
In addition, Casey and Thomson ensure the uniforms are upcycled correctly by sending them to an aggregation centre in Auckland, which sorts the used material into fibre groups.
At that point, the material is then turned into industrial textiles, such as moving blankets, stuffing, and geotextiles.
Thomson said one of the biggest challenges was the lack of solutions for each fibre.
‘‘It could be that the garment is so complicated you have to deconstruct it, so there is going to be clothing we can’t deal with. ‘‘[However], we become more and more aware, day-to-day, about more possible solutions for textiles.’’
New fibre-to-fibre technology would help that, Thomson said.
‘‘There are technologies coming out now that are taking textiles and taking it right back to its original form, like taking polyester outfits and creating polyester pallets and providing that back into manufacturing industries.’’
Casey said they hoped to expand the textile re-use programme to Australia, but also further afield.
‘‘Fast fashion is quite a big issue and that shows no sign of slowing and so there’s going to be more and more need for these systems to deal with the churn rate we are going through on textiles.’’
The Formary, founded in 2008, was named the Emerging Gold Services winner at the Wellington Gold Awards on July 7.