The Circular Textile Revolution — Breaking the Linear Model

I’m not going to go into the ethics or consumerism issues, which is a topic on its own. Consumers buy what is available to them and should demand value for money. What if the price was calculated by usage times? The problem is in the sheer volumes and quantities that are being produced. Production methods have been improved and sourced from places with lower production costs. Material use has shifted from natural fibres that are dependent on seasonal growing and environmental factors to cheaper synthetics, which can be produced on an industrial scale continuously from oil. We have already produced enough for eight generations! Then there is the economy of scale, where it is more cost-effective to produce more than is needed, and unused/sold produce is factored into the profits. Another characteristic is that continuous blending takes place all the way from virgin fibres to yarns and fabrics. This creates a dilemma for recycling, where mono-materials are preferred without fabric treatments, additives, or in single colours.

In view of circular textiles, we need to look at the various stages in the lifecycle of an item from raw material, manufacturing, sale, use, and end-of-life. The reality is that there is no perfect circularity when it comes to textiles yet – there is always blending and adding virgin sources to produce commercially attractive and durable garments. Looking at it from an R-strategies perspective, the first is to refuse (do I need this?). Each next stage also brings new opportunities to extend the life of an item, and new business models have emerged around these from re-make to repair and ultimately recycle the material as feedstock into new garments. The perception also that recycled is of lower quality needs to change. Sometimes the old methods of manufacturing and processes are the ones we need to go back to and looking after our clothes by maintaining and repairing them correctly.

Many private investments are being made into textile recycling, but there needs to be a long-term view to profits from the funding of these new innovations. Public funding has helped innovation and research, but very few of these results, unfortunately, make it into practice due to long development times, high risks and required infrastructure. It takes years to implement, and unfortunately, profitability too takes time. This is where there is a gap – the valley of death – and we don’t have time left to shift fast enough from traditional linear systems to more circular ones. The chicken-and-egg dilemma is often mentioned, which comes first, demand or competitive solutions?

What we need is a multifaceted approach to make the adaptation and business case. We need both the carrot of new profitable supply chains through public investment and taxation benefits and the legislative stick to enforce the change to more sustainable practices. The momentum from a few years back has ground to a halt due to uncertainties about new up and coming legislation, and simply many brands just struggling to stay in business. The whole system is not ready yet, so it needs commitment from all stakeholders and shared development. Each needs a slice, but unfortunately, in many cases, the cake is not big enough. Many brands are trying to trace back their supply chain tiers but find it hard to get the required information or guarantees, making it a burden and additional expense.

Ecosystems and supply chains need to return from global to more local or regional. The decades of reducing costs mean that much of the local manufacturing has disappeared and the skills with it. Yet, we have local waste problems that need to be dealt with locally, not sent out of sight to so-called poorer countries to deal with. We need to build systems that can process the textile waste materials through collection and sorting systems, and at the least regional processing into raw material fractions. We need skilled professional sorters that channel the items based on their condition to different R-strategy solutions. We also need technology and automation to bring down the cost of processing the large volumes of end-of-life and return them as feedstock into the different recycling options. We have many recycling methods already available from mechanical, chemical, and thermo-mechanical. The sorted fractions' material content of large volumes determines what they are suitable for, what application they are suited to, and what recycling method works best. It comes down to the basics of being fit for purpose, making the new product with recycled content as good as possible with as long a usage time as possible.

Both closed and open solutions are needed for mixed, separately collected textile waste. What we have available in excess and are still keep producing does not match the current recycling feedstock specification. Over 80% of post-consumer textile waste comes from households and is mixed fibres and colours with hard parts and treatments, including dye pigments, elastane, coating, layers, etc. These are the big masses that we need to find solutions for. Textiles are also easily damaged, not only during collection and storage but also during use and due to design and manufacture choices. We also have the historical legacy of decades of production to deal with, of which we sometimes know little. How and who will be responsible for dealing with these low-value volumes? We are already, as a society, paying for the cost of this waste fraction, and even when EPR schemes are up and running, we will still have years of already produced items which the municipal waste management will have to deal with.

To make the next textile revolution happen, we need a major shift in all our mindsets – to start valuing the products, appreciating the stages and participants it has taken to manufacture each item, and going back to having less but of better long-lasting quality. While quality is hard to quantify, we can measure and test durability and many other aspects of textiles to ensure they last longer. The supply chains need demand from producers and commitment from all stakeholders to create partnerships that work for all.

Innovations are crucial for addressing the problems we have created, and investments are necessary to bring these solutions into practice, including infrastructure that can scale up quickly. Collaboration and connection between different regional actors are vital to give each a profitable role in the system. The supply chains are however long and need different stages to recycle, and each treatment adds to the costs. We already have many patented recycling solutions for both natural and synthetic materials, but they are still working on the linear model competing with virgin feedstock and unable to match the commercial scale yet.

We need new global standards and clear communication with consumers, so they can make informed choices based not just on price or claims. The item price should include the effects of the whole lifecycle, with taxes and subsidies supporting actions to keep products in use as long as possible. The administration and monitoring should be led not by the producers alone but with the inclusion of authorities to ensure adherence to all planetary and social requirements.