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Circular Fashion Report 2020 calls the outgoing year Zero year, affirming the trend for global changes in the fashion industry. How is the circular economy developing, and why was “sustainable development” the phrase of the year?
About the expert: Tanya Nudelman, co-founder of the Nothing New project, a publication about secondary consumption, an aggregator of offers on Russian and international fashion resale platforms.
circular economy
Digitization is shaping new relationships between suppliers, brands, retailers, consumers, and is also driving the transformation of the fashion industry into a model based not just on the sale of clothes, but also on long-term use. All this is very similar to Uber in the automotive industry, Spotify in the music industry, and Airbnb in the hospitality industry. We are witnessing a transition from a consumption model to a ownership model. The result is a much more sustainable system that positively impacts both business and the planet.
As for the cyclicity, it is even more interesting here. In a circular economy, each participant has his own role: suppliers and manufacturers are responsible for the production of renewable materials, which can then be recycled more than once, thereby conserving natural resources (Circular in Materials). Designers and brands create products and packaging that will have a long life cycle. They also support and stimulate local communities and the art of manual labor (Circular in Design). And finally, retailers and buyers use all possible tools for the secondary use of the product: resale, rental, exchange, care for things, recycling, upcycle (Circular in Re-Use).
Why the fashion industry?
Traditionally, the fashion industry has always been based on a linear approach with a consumption model: make – sell – waste. As a result, this simple chain has led to global environmental pollution and resource depletion. Every second the world is burying or incinerating textile waste that would fit in one truck. According to statistics, the average American gets rid of 37 kg of clothes every year. Around the world, approximately 92 million tons of textile waste is collected annually. By 2030, this volume is expected to reach 134 million tons.
At the same time, we began to buy much more – on average, today a consumer purchases 60% more textiles than 15 years ago. In Britain alone, more than 2 tons of clothes are bought every minute, which exceeds the figures of any other country in Europe. And if you look globally, 56 million tons are bought in the world every year. If everything continues with the same dynamics, then by 2030 this number will grow to 93 million tons.
You can imagine the pressure the fashion industry is under with numbers like these. Tons of used and discarded clothes, shoes and accessories end up in landfills, although with the help of innovative technologies, up to 95% of this waste can be recycled and reused. Unfortunately, today only 1% of the materials used for the production of clothing are recycled materials.
What you need to know about sustainable fashion
In 2020, in the fashion industry, perhaps the most frequently mentioned phrase has become sustainable developmentwhere environmental and ethical issues come to the fore. The result of this approach is to reduce the damage caused to nature from improper production and disposal of things. There is no single solution, a set of measures is needed that will change business models and consumer behavioral patterns.
It is the concept of “sustainability” that has caused the phenomenal rise of clothing rental companies and resale platforms. The leader in the clothing rental industry, Rent the Runway, is already valued at $1 billion, with the total value of the recycled clothing market reaching $41 billion by 2022.
Another important component of sustainability is processing or recycling, which means “recycle”. Recycling involves the complete processing of materials in order to create new things. In recent years, recycled textiles have occupied a special niche in the fashion industry: consumers are interested in recycling, governments and funds support it, global corporations invest in recycling, which means this trend will only grow.
Be responsible or die
The growing consumer interest in recycling dictates certain behavior for brands. The brand simply has no choice but to be responsible and stimulate innovation in recycling, conduct research to create new materials, modify production processes to reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere. And, of course, to conduct educational work with the consumer. Over the past few years, brands have been actively encouraging consumers to recycle unwanted clothing. For this, they offer free delivery or weekly pickups from home, organize clothing drop-off points, provide discount coupons and other bonuses.
The ultimate goal of all these activities is to create a closed system with a cyclic production model, where the raw material is reused and recycled over and over again.
Leaders in the recycling market
Pangaia is a young, but already very famous brand that sees its mission in protecting the planet through innovative materials. The brand recently announced a partnership with startup Kintra, which has invented a fabric that mimics the stretch, durability and moisture resistance of synthetics. The fabric may decompose. This means that a jacket that you no longer wear can “fertilize” your garden or vegetable garden.
Prada, also known for its nylon garments, has decided to switch completely to recycled nylon by 2021: this polymer can be recycled repeatedly without loss of quality.
IKEA released collection of home textiles from recycled ocean plastic. The recovered plastic is cleaned, sorted, mechanically recycled, mixed with recycled PET bottles and turned into yarn and fabric.
Another retail giant – Uniqlo — released jackets made from recycled down. It was taken from 620 thousand down jackets from the Uniqlo U collection, which were collected in Japan all last year.
Ethical Manufacturing Pioneer Designer Stella McCartney in collaboration with Adidas launched a limited edition sweatshirt in 2019, one of the brand’s first fully recyclable designs. In addition, he Adidas has been partnering with Parley for the Oceans for several years to create sneakers with uppers made from recycled ocean plastic.
Vans launched a pilot program to recycle old or unwanted shoes in Southern California. The shoe brand has partnered with recycling company TerraCycle to turn old sneakers into new items, from phone cases to park benches.
This list would not be complete without Patagonia is an outerwear brand that has been using recycled plastic since 1993. The company also has its own recycling scheme – any brand item that can no longer be repaired can be returned to Patagonia stores for further processing.
Pioneers of recycling
reGAIN is the first app in the UK designed to recycle unwanted clothing and textiles, launched in April 2018. Since then, reGAIN has partnered with Superdry, Asics, New Balance, Boohoo and Missguided, as well as Expedia, Hotels.com, EVE Sleep and BodyBuilding.com. A year after its launch, reGain partnered with PrettyLittleThing to allow PTL shoppers to redeem unwanted clothing, shoes, and accessories through the app in exchange for discount codes for their next PrettyLittleThing purchase.
The German company I: Collect sorts things, collaborates with global brands, taking control of all further stages – sends good clothes to charities, and gives away those that can no longer be worn for recycling.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched a project with the government of New York to create more than 1 collection points for used clothes. The charity is already consulting with Chinese authorities and plans to launch a similar project in major cities in Asia.
Eco-friendly fabrics and upcycling
The trend of recent years is the creation of environmentally friendly alternatives to the fabrics we are used to, for example, cotton, synthetics, leather and plastic. In the usual technological process, a huge amount of resources is spent on their production. Why not learn how to produce fabrics from natural materials? The main advantage of such materials is that they are easier to recycle.
For example, the Orange fiber – material based on nettle fibers, similar to viscose — made from pomace from the production of orange juice.
There is the possibility of turning into clothes and other types of waste, such as milk. When milk turns sour, it separates into whey and protein flakes. “When you take off the whey, you are left with something like cottage cheese. This curd is put into a machine that works like a noodle machine,” says designer Anke Domaske, founder QMilk, a company that develops new types of biodegradable fibers in Hemmingen, Germany. “Together with water, you create dough. The dough is passed through the thinnest holes and the result is not noodles, but fibers that are thinner than hair. These fibers are then spun into threads that have a silky texture. The resulting material can be used to make knitwear. It is very important that clothes made entirely from QMilk fibers no longer need to be recycled, they can simply be composted at home,” Domaske says.
QMilk isn’t the only company making textiles from unusual sources. For example, eco-friendly leather substitutes are produced from pineapple leaves – a material called Pinatex already used by many brands, including H&M. Believe it or not, fabrics have even been made from algae, mushrooms, coffee grounds and shrimp shells.
Small brands cannot always afford expensive technological solutions, so they go the other way – they use the upcycling technique – creating new things from old ones. An old, worn item or material is taken and transformed into completely new wardrobe items. Clothing made using the upcycling technique is present not only among enthusiastic designers, but also among well-known brands. This gives a second life to clothes and fabrics and encourages creativity.
The main difference between upcycling and recycling is that in upcycling, designers use whole materials to create new things, while in recycling, materials must first be recycled.
What is happening in our country
In March 2020, a scandal broke out in our country involving Europe’s largest clothing retail chain, H&M. Used items that buyers handed over for processing in stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg were sent to a warehouse, from where they were put up for sale on the Internet.
This became known after the release of a report by journalist Elena Volodina on YouTube. H&M conducted its own investigation. It turned out that all the clothes coming to the retailer as part of the H&M Garment Collecting initiative went through the sorting stage at the enterprises of partners of the German network I: Collect. In our country, such a partner was the Asteks LLC, located in the Lytkarinsky district of the Moscow region. As a result of this investigation, I: Collect have decided to immediately take a more serious control and terminate their relationship with Asteks.
If in the West recycling is no longer just a trend, but rather a norm, then in our country everything is just emerging. “Second wind” — the only foundation that collects and recycles clothes. Since 2015, Second Wind has been developing an infrastructure for the collection of unwanted clothes, which is used annually by more than 200 thousand people from 18 Russian regions. Clothes that can no longer be used to donate to charities are being recycled. Warehouse workers sort clothes by composition, separating synthetics, wool and cotton, then sort by color and cut off all accessories. After that, textile raw materials either go for processing to the partners of the fund, or are processed in the Second Wind’s own workshop.
One of the main Russian newsmakers in 2020 is value. A Finnish dairy company has released a collection of clothing made from Mi Terro fabric, obtained from the remains of a dairy production. The collection was created in collaboration with Olga Glagoleva, a promoter of recycling in our country, and the 99recycle brand. All clothing is recyclable.
“Over the past five years in the world and, of course, in our country, the trend for recycling and organic has moved from small hippie stores to the largest conglomerates of clothing manufacturers. Being non-green and not having a sustainability department is not fashionable or modern. And the bigger you are, the more money you have to invest in the greening of your processes. The Russian economy, of course, still exists on the extraction and trade of minerals, but it seems to me that the largest global trend in our country will also spread quite quickly, and in the next few years we will face serious economic and production transformations, ”says Olga Glagoleva, art director of the Go-circular project
Trend or vital necessity?
Over the past couple of years, the topic of sustainable development has become one of the most discussed in the global fashion industry. Solving the problem of global overproduction and improper disposal of textile waste is possible only through the joint efforts of the state, manufacturers, retailers, consumers, media and public organizations.
Sustainable fashion is a blue ocean for brands and retailers. Waste monetization is already a blue ocean for material producers. Approximately $500 billion is the annual loss to the fashion industry caused by the fact that clothes are rarely recycled.
In August 2019, at the G7 summit in Biarritz, 32 companies representing about 150 brands joined the Fashion Pact, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry on nature. The pact was initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron and Francois-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kering (Gucci, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen). In addition to Kering, the list includes fast fashion giants H&M and Inditex, as well as Chanel, Hermès International, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and major sports brands Adidas and Nike. Under the pact, participating companies commit to switch to renewable energy sources, use more recycled materials, eliminate single-use plastic packaging and support biodiversity conservation initiatives until 2030.
There are those who are skeptical about how big brands are committed to sustainability, accusing them of greenwashing.
“Let’s not pretend that people are shopping at Zara to get value that can then be passed on to the next generation,” says Vogue Australia’s Sustainability Editor-in-Chief Claire Press. “Over the last 20 years, the fashion system has completely changed, going from seasonal bursts to almost instant gratification. Six months of waiting for a new collection seems crazy to the new generation. Growing up in the era of “fast fashion” and Instagram operate on the principle of “see now, buy now – see-bought.”
Undoubtedly, recycling and sustainable fabrics will play a key role in a sustainable future, but consumers will also have to change their behaviour.
A conscious choice in favor of high-quality and durable things from responsible manufacturers, respect and extension of the life cycle of personal belongings, resale and rental of clothes, recycling – all this should become part of our daily life. We need to slow down, take some time to put our clothes back on and re-evaluate them. Remember, whatever you wear takes a huge amount of physical and creative resources.
Being responsible and taking care of the world around us is no longer just a trend, it is a vital necessity. And 2020 has clearly shown all of us how fragile our planet is, how much it needs our attention and protection.
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