Recover’s Recycling Technology Shows Customers Exactly How Impactful a Purchase Decision Can Be
The company works with brands including DL 1961, Perry Ellis and Revolve to create sustainable collections that save water and reduce textile landfill waste.
Steps forward may have been small,
but consumers are becoming more aware of sustainable fashion and how meaningful their purchases can be in creating progress for a better future. And that's where Recover's materials come in.
Recover's mission is to create circular fashion for all. The material science company specializes in producing lowimpact high-quality recycled cotton fiber at scale and was created out of a 75-yearold textile company in Spain with decades of experience, expertise and trade secrets to extend the use of fiber in yard spinning and textiles.
During a panel at WWD's The Wear House at SXSW, Boris Mercier, senior vice president of marketing at Recover, shared his insights into sustainability practices within the fashion industry and how
Recover is helping brands, including DL 1961, Revolve, Perry Ellis and Primark, meet their goals.
According to Mercier, there are three big issues with the fashion industry today.
The first is the immense use of natural resources, the second is the waste that is generated because of the amount of use of natural resources and the third is the lack of solutions at scale to solve the use of natural resources. He explained that between 2002 and 2015, consumers bought twice as much clothing and wore each item less.
Notably, Mercier called out the upcoming regulations in Europe, which will set a minimum requirement for recycled content and garments.
“It's so much more fashion, much more clothing, much more garments, which generates a lot of waste,” said Mercier. “Every year you have 48 million tons of garments that are thrown away. That's the big challenge and there's a lot to do.”
Recover's technology works to turn this discarded cotton fiber into usable material. The process saves materials from ending up in a landfill while also reducing water usage. For every hoodie that a brand creates through Recover, they are saving nearly 80 gallons of water. “It's quite an impact,” said Mercier.
Consumers can learn about this impact when they buy an item that was created in collaboration with Recover. Each product has a hang tag where the buyer can read the details of the environmental impact the item created with messaging that relates to day-to-day activities, like how many days of drinking water was saved. Mercier explained that this serves not only to communicate sustainability efforts and Recover's mission to consumers for educational purposes, but also generates demand for the brand.
Mercier said that he's been excited to see the enthusiasm coming from the brands that Recover has collaborated with. “Most brands don't really have a big knowledge of sustainability but they are eager to learn and to communicate about it,” he said. “In the last three years, we've done more than 10 collaborations with pretty renowned brands and they are willing to do it and willing to do it well. [Brands] don't want to greenwash and they are really cautious.”