15 - Textiles: the perfect fit for a circular economy – part 2

In this week’s episode of TOMRA Talks Circular, we continue to talk to Louisa Hoyes, Business Development Manager, Textiles at TOMRA, about the current state of affairs across the textiles value chain, and the solutions that exist to help close the loop and shift to a true circular economy for textiles. 

Listen to the episode below, or use your favourite platform (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts)

Show Notes

•  Extended producer responsibility (EPR) for textiles [01:35]

• Can deposit-return systems work for textiles? [05:13]

• Six steps to circularity in the textile industry [6:58]

• The role of digitalization in the textile sector [10:26]

• Greenwashing claims with textile labeling [15:12]

• The unreliability of the Higg Index [17:19]

• A message to all textile designers [18:37]

• Final thoughts [20:23]

   

Transcript

Mithu: Welcome to TOMRA Talks Circular, where we explore how businesses, municipalities, and governments are collaborating towards a circular economy. In the last few months, we've been reading and hearing a lot about how clothing brands and retailers are planning to do their part in moving towards a circular economy. Things like takeback efforts or sneakers, handbags and clothing made from recycled materials. But how much of these efforts are genuine and how much is greenwashing? What is actually happening in the world of textiles these days? 

I am very excited about this episode in which we will be talking about one of the hottest topics in recycling these days, and that is textile recycling. Joining me today is Louisa Hoyes, Business Development Manager Textiles at TOMRA. Having started her career with Veolia in 2015, Louisa joined TOMRA in 2019, where she has taken full responsibility for developing the textile sorting application. As textile recycling continues to gain attention, Louisa engages with diverse stakeholders across the entire value chain and supporting the move towards a new circular economy for textiles. Louisa, welcome to the program. 

Louisa: Thanks very much, Mithu.

Mithu: So, let's get into this. Louisa, you mentioned extended producer responsibility or EPR for textiles. Could you explain what it is exactly that you're talking about there?

Louisa: Yes. So, EPR or extended producer responsibility is a mechanism for us to put the responsibility of the end of the life of a garment, material, or a product back onto the producer of that material. So, if we think of the material in this aspect as the textiles or the clothing, we would put the responsibility of the end of the life of that back onto the brands that are producing and putting those garments onto the market. 

So, they would be responsible at point of putting that product onto the market for covering the costs, for dealing with those textiles or those garments when they come to the end of their life. EPR incentivizes circularity and it incentivizes producers to think about what will happen to that material when it reaches the end of their life. 

Without EPR, it's typically the responsibility of municipalities and eventually residents that will be responsible for the end of the life of materials. Since they become waste, they enter the waste flow and municipalities or waste management companies will then have the responsibility for collecting, sorting, recycling, incinerating, or landfilling those garments. Without EPR, there's no responsibility for or there's no accountability for that product once it reaches the end of its life. 

Whereas EPR (there is) generally a fee will be applied to any products that a producer wants to put onto the market, and then it follows the polluter pays principle. So, they will have a fee that they need to pay per item that they put onto the market. So, this brand will need to pay an additional fee per every piece of clothing that they put onto the market. That fee is often or sometimes transferred into the price of the product. The consumer has to absorb that cost. 

Then again, the more the consumer is buying, the more they will have to pay. So, it follows this polluter pays principle. Something that's also very interesting in the EPR sector or something that's also interesting for extended producer responsibility is eco-modulated fees. 

Eco-adaptation of the fees that the producer has to pay for that item, which can incentivize brands to produce more sustainable items. For example, the fee for an item which is designed for longevity, it's designed to last a long time or that contains recycled content or that's even made from production waste. For example, the fee for that item would be lower than the fee for an item that's put onto the market, that's made from 100% virgin material, or is low quality. So, it won't last very long.

Mithu: It's almost a reward system, I guess, in a sense, right? [Louisa: Yes] And these fees that consumers would pay when purchasing a garment or other textiles, do they ever get reimbursed these fees? Or is it just a cost that they must endure or incur?

Louisa: They can be. And we see that through bottle deposit return systems. So, you will have a fee that's placed onto the bottles when you purchase it, and at the point that you return that bottle, if you bring it back and if you feed it back into a collection system at the end of its life, then you can get … or you can receive that fee placed back onto the item when you return it. 

It's slightly different to when we when we have plastic bottles or cans because they are typically single use. So, they will come back into the system much quicker, but it can still be applied to textiles. It will help the consumer to think carefully and think more about what happens to this garment at the end of its life. Feeding it back … it puts a value onto that item rather than it being just a waste product at the end of its life. It has some monetary or some incentivized value in it. So, it incentivizes you to take care of it, to bring it back and to feed it into a proper collection solution.

Mithu: Okay, we've talked about EPR … or you've talked about EPR. That's one of the challenges that we need to get in place to be efficient with the textile recycling processes. I'm assuming there are other challenges as well. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about those? 

Louisa: Yes, absolutely. If we look at the six steps to circularity, we can apply it to any product or any material that we want to make circular. So, if we look at those six steps of circularity, which is: make, sell, consume, collect, sort, and recycle – to ensure the circularity of a product, we need to ensure that through each of those six steps we are thinking about the circularity. 

If we apply it to textiles, we need to make sure that textiles are made and designed in a sustainable, circular way. So, they're designed for longevity and durability, and they're also designed for recycling and to be recycled. Then we need to think of the way in which we're selling textiles. So, there we've talked about … and we can apply, for example, extended producer responsibility through the sale of the garments. Then we can also think about the overproduction of textiles. 

Then we have consumers – we see that there's an increasing awareness among consumers and purchasers to be more sustainable. And we can also think about greenwashing claims here. So how to educate consumers against how sustainable the purchases they're making really are. 

Then we need to look at once the textile has become waste or once the consumer no longer uses it. How do we collect that? How do we make sure that it's in an efficient collection system, both for re-use and for recycling? And how do we feed that then into … once we've recovered the reusable items … how do we make sure that that fits into a high-value automated sorting system to recover the fibers? 

We need to make sure that we can feed them into high-value, fiber-to-fiber recycling solutions. To ensure that we can go through and make this product circular, we need to fulfil all of those six steps. We know that fiber-to-fiber recycling technologies are very immature. It's a very new sector. There's a lot of new technologies just developing and they're not yet at scale. So, we need to almost wait, and we need to first see the development of those new recycling technologies. 

It's also a completely new value chain that we're building. So, we need to – collaboration will be a really important part in the next few years. To make sure that everybody along the whole value chain and everybody along this whole new value chain is really collaborating. To understand and to ensure that we're really building the most robust new value chain. To ensure that textiles are collected, they're reused where they possibly can, and they're fed into high-value recycling solutions where they can. And we're making the best use of this new value chain. 

As I've mentioned already before, the collection of textiles – we need to really think about and change the collection infrastructures that we have for textiles.

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Mithu: Going back to collections. When I asked you about the deposit before … if the consumer actually gets the feedback and you explain a process where the consumer actually brings the garment back, and then could be reimbursed, theoretically. To me, that sounds like we need digitalization. And it's one of the megatrends that we hear and see everywhere. What role, if any, does it have in the textile recycling sector?

Louisa: Yes, absolutely. Digitalization has a big part to play in the new circular economy for textiles. We can think about digital identification technology. So, for example, digital product passports. They are used today. So, most textiles or many garments and items that we purchase already have a digital product passport. Or they have, for example, an RFID tag. It's typically on the swing tag of the garment, and it's used in stores, for example, for stock check. It can hold information on that, that swing tag of the garment and it can tell the brands what items they have on the shop floor, what stock they have available of that textile. 

What we're seeing now is how to maximize the potential of that digital product passport. How to make sure that we're really getting the most value out of that digital product passport. If we think of a future where we have these digital IDs throughout the whole lifetime of the textile, they could be for example, implemented in the care label on the inside of your garment. And the digital ID could be used throughout the whole lifecycle of that textile. 

When that garment is produced in the digital ID, it could say where it was produced, who produced it, what kind of fibers are used to make that garment. Then once that garment makes it to the brand, they can use it in store for, again, stock check, but they could also use it in store to communicate to consumers while they're in the shops. It could be in the form of, for example, a QR code. The consumers could scan the QR code and see how the garments made. Is it sustainable? But also, things like what other items in the store would match this garment, for example. 

Then it can also extend to when the consumer gets home. It can provide information such as care of the garment, how to wash it, how to repair it. Then it could also provide information to the consumer of when they have finished with the garment, where should they take it? What system could it be fed into for collection, sorting, and recycling? 

There are many different stages of the life cycle of the garment that this one digital ID could pass through. So once the consumer is finished with the garment, it then enters the reuse and recycling. And at that point there could be information sharing. So once the consumer takes that garment to a drop-off point, that could relay information back to the brand to say this garment that was produced in 2022 has now made it to a re-use center and it's been scanned by this employee. That information pings back to the brand to say that that's happened. Then it could be used in their sorting and collection so that you know, what materials, what fibers it was produced from. It could tell you the year it was made, which can share information around. 

It can share how fashionable that item is now compared to when it was produced. So, it can share information with the manual sorter. If that garment isn't suitable for re-use, then the garment will make its way to automated sorting facility where, again, it can now share a different kind of information. The digital product ID will say this is what material has been used to make me, this is what dyes have been included. So, it will be able to share information through its whole life cycle. It's a really exciting concept at the moment that we're now seeing for the digitalization of this textile … that can inform the value chain as it passes through. 

Mithu: I have to say that sounds absolutely amazing. Again, digitalization crossing those six steps to make the whole process … or to support making the whole process truly circular. I mentioned greenwashing, and this is a concern that I have, especially when I see all the things happening in the textile sector. Can you talk to the topic of greenwashing?

Louisa: Yes, absolutely. So, greenwashing in textiles or fashion is about making false or misleading claims about the sustainability of that item or that piece of clothing to make it more attractive to the consumer. We know that there is a shift in consumer awareness. Consumers want to be more sustainable, and they want to make the right purchases. 

What we've seen until now is greenwashing claims being placed onto garments. I think we've all seen, for example, eco-labels and labels saying, ‘I'm sustainable’ or ‘I'm eco-friendly’. But what has happened is … those labels have no data to be backed up behind them. And the textile sector has been very opaque. For consumers to really know, is that claim real or not? There's very little information. 

We've seen the Higg Index was used … or has been used in the apparel sector as a kind of sustainability rating system. But recently, we've it's come under huge criticism because it's been allowing the labeling of sustainable clothing to consumers, but with very little transparency of the underlying data behind that model. For example, the Higg Index favored synthetic fabrics. Synthetic fabrics come from production of fossil fuels, so they're incredibly unsustainable source of material.

Mithu: What is the Higg Index exactly?

Louisa: The Higg Index is a sustainability rating system, and it was created by the fashion industry. It was a way of rating the sustainability of a garment. So, it could be used to allow the labeling of an item to be sustainable or not. If brands wanted to follow the Higg Index, they could follow the rating and be able to say this garment is sustainable. 

But really there was no transparency of the data that was underlying that. And it was also … there were two strong ties to the fashion industry. So, it was developed by the fashion industry, by some of the biggest brands to place this Higg Index on the textile. So, it's come under a lot of criticism for greenwashing. 

In June this year, the Norwegian Consumer Authority actually banned the use of the Higg Index as a marketing tool for consumers. So, they no longer allowed brands to market their textiles or their clothing as sustainable based on the Higg Index. Just a few days ago, we saw that Zalando was one of the most recent fashion retailers to ditch the index in their marketing. 

Mithu: Okay, so we're moving in the right direction. There seems to be a real awareness of greenwashing and really trying to bring that to the forefront and say there are solutions, and this is definitely not one of them. You, Mr. and Ms. Consumer, need to be aware of what's going on and we'll support you in that and making the right decisions. So, Louisa, you've taken us on a huge journey of what's happening in the world of textiles recycling. Do you have a final message you'd like to share?

Louisa: Yes, I think it's important, while we're talking about collecting the waste textiles, sorting them, feeding them into a new recycling process … to take a step back and remember the waste hierarchy and think about the most sustainable option, which is to not produce that textile waste in the first place. 

So, following the reduce, reuse, recycle. Avoid generating that textile waste in the first place. Look at extending the lifetime of garments so they don't become waste … or that they don't become waste so quickly. And expanding the second-hand economy for textiles. I think that's really a trend that we have seen. There are so many more online platforms now for people reselling their textile. So, to not focus solely on the end of the life and how to how to account for the end of the life, but make sure that we're doing everything we can. That it doesn't become to the end of its life so quickly. So, moving away from the fast fashion, low-quality, cheap, overconsumption of textiles, I think is a really important message to remember.
Mithu: And then I have a final question for you. You're obviously quite involved in this area. What do you do on a personal level to follow exactly what you've just advised us to do?

Louisa: Yes, that's a good question. I definitely think my vision or the way I think about the textiles or the clothing that I purchase has changed. One of the main things that I have noticed in myself is now I always check the label to see what the garment is produced of. Because I'm aware that at the moment with current recycling technologies, it's more difficult to recycle something that is made up of many different blends. 

If you have a t shirt or a jumper that's made up of 20% cotton and 80% polyester – that will be more difficult to recycle than a pure fiber or a garment that's made of 100% pure polyester. I do find now that I look … to make sure that I'm buying 100% pure materials. And also, that I'm buying textiles that will last me many years. I think a lot of the textiles I have or a lot of the clothing I have in my wardrobe is already very old. I'm just more aware of it now that I'm not. When I when I make a purchase and I expect it to live a very long time. 

Mithu: And I have to say, whenever I see you, you are always perfectly dressed, so one doesn't necessarily exclude the other. [Louisa: Thank you.]  Louisa, thanks very much for coming on the show. I'm sure that we will be having you back as the textile recycling industry progresses. But thank you for the initial insights and your thoughts.

Louisa: Thanks very much, Mithu.

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