11 - Weaving a new circular textile value chain, together

Did you know that the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world? It contributes to 10% of global carbon emissions and 20% of global water waste. In this episode of TOMRA Talks Circular, Hilde van Duijn, Head of Global Value Chains at Circle Economy, shares her knowledge and perspectives on how industry players and consumers can work together to create a circular textile value chain.

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

Show Notes

• Textiles – the 3^rd most polluting industry [0:23]
• The myth about fast fashion [3:48]
• What can be done to solve textile waste? [6:14]
• Reasons why textile recycling is lagging [9:17]
• Durability vs recyclability of textiles [13:38]
• Systems change that addresses textile workers globally [15:98]
• How textile recycling claims are misleading [16:49]
• Expert advice for guilt-free shopping [19:39]

Transcript

Mithu: Welcome to TOMRA Talks Circular, where we explore how businesses, municipalities and governments are collaborating towards a circular economy. My name is Mithu Mohren. Did you know that fashion is the third most polluting industry worldwide? The only sectors polluting more are fossil fuels and agriculture.

The fashion industry produces around 10% of our annual carbon footprint. And to give you some perspective, that's more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. That's a lot. Beyond addressing the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the textile industries, we also tackle the growing mountains of textile waste and pollution. In May this year, a high-resolution satellite photo revealed a giant dump of unused textiles in Chile's and Atacama Desert. If you haven't already seen this image – and I actually have – I urge you to take a look. It's amazing, and not the most pleasant sort of way.

Joining us today is a very special guest. Hilde van Duijn, Head of Global Value Chains at Circle Economy. Hilde has worked extensively with some of the biggest global brands in fashion to improve their sustainability. And today she is here to share her insights with us on what is needed to create a circular textile value chain. Hilde, welcome to the program.

Hilde: Thank you.

Mithu: So, Hilde, let's get right into it. Some of our listeners might know Circle Economy from the annual Circularity Gap Report. At your organization publishes, but perhaps you can take a minute to tell our audience a little more about Circle Economy and what you do.

Hilde: Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having me. Circle Economy is a foundation – it's an impact organization based out of Amsterdam in the Netherlands but operating globally. We also have a very big international team where around 75 people that representing many different nationalities. And our aim is to empower governments, cities, and nations to put the circular economy into action.

We do that by measuring how circular the economy is created through the Circularity Gap report. But we also celebrate and share best practices because of course there are already great examples of what circularity looks like. And we also help to identify context-specific opportunities towards increased circularity. And besides all of this, we are quite active in capacity building to really share our knowledge frameworks methodology for others to use. So, we basically grow this movement and our understanding on circularity.

Mithu: Okay. And I'm glad you brought that up, Hilde. There are already really great examples of circularity, and it's great. The work that you're doing with Circle Economy is actually working to take those best practices and bring them out and expand them and make them scalable, or enable making them scalable, or educating people about how they can do it to accelerate towards a circular economy as quickly as possible. So, thanks for joining us to today to talk about one specific area of circular economy, and that is the textile industry and its challenges that the sector faces in transitioning to a circular economy today.

Textiles alone, if I understand correctly, make up 5% of global annual waste. And that might not sound like a lot, but actually it is a massive amount that actually we probably don't … even I don't think about on a daily basis. Where is all of this coming from? Is it fast fashion? Is that the guilty party or has it always been this way?

Hilde: Well, that's a great question. Maybe to start with the concept of fast fashion, and I think you hinted at the right way, or at least how most people hint at it. Saying, well, are these fast fashion brands the ones to blame? But what I would like to say about the concept of fast fashion is it's basically a behavior problem because many of the products that fashion brands produce, they could last for a very long time. However, we treat them as disposable products.

That basically now results in the fact that we buy more textiles than we ever have done before. And we use it for an increasingly shorter amount of time before we dispose of it. So, this is this mountain of textiles is, of course, mostly created by our changed relation to textiles. So instead of keeping textiles for a longer amount of time, repairing it, giving it to others, like really ensuring it stays in use, we have really started treating textiles as disposable products.

Mithu: So, this goes back to really what we've talked about in other podcasts that really the level of consumerism has is increasing and continues to increase. And perhaps that is the major culprit.

Hilde: Yes, yes, for sure. And of course, I mean, there's more to textile waste than just these post-consumer textiles, but that is the biggest volume of textiles that we see lying around. Especially if you see images of these landfills, for instance, in the country like Chile – that actually that is really the result of our changed consumption patterns.

Mithu: And we've seen this, of course, with plastics being burned and incineration and landfilled and shipped actually to other countries. So again, you brought up Chile. I'm sure that all of this was not consumed and produced in Chile. So, it's the same sort of situation, right? It's sort of this out of sight, out of mind mentality that you've indirectly alluded to. And we know that that does not work. What do we need to do, in your opinion, to solve this?

Hilde: Yes, and maybe there's one difference between the textiles and plastics industry that we could also highlight here. That is the fact that for textiles at the moment that you dispose of them – ideally, consumers don't put them in the household waste, but you would put them in a textiles collection bin. Because the beauty of textiles is that there is a second-hand market for them. So currently what happens in a country where you would have textiles collections.

For instance, in a European country, part of those textiles would be collected separately and then the textile sorter would assess: Is this suitable for a second-hand market? And if so, which second-hand market? That now results in the fact that about 55% of all the post-consumer textiles that are being collected is actually being reworn or at least made available on the second-hand market in your own country or abroad. But then of course, that still leaves us at 55% of textiles is currently sold to the second-hand market.

That still leaves 45% of all these textiles that are in need of a good destination. Often people think that these textiles are currently already being recycled into new textiles. [Mithu: oh really?] Unfortunately, that's not really the case. So out of all the text cells that are being collected, less than 2% would be recycled back into new textiles. And most of it would actually end up being either downcycled, so it becomes isolation materials, or it would be end up as a wiper. Many people think of the wipers that they have at home that may be used for a long period of time, but these wipers are actually disposable wipers. So those would be used only for one time before being disposed of anyway. So even though it's good that your shirt becomes a wiper and is used once more before it's being incinerated or landfilled, it's not a very circular destination either.

Mithu: Okay. I agree with you – my eyes have been opened with all of the works that that TOMRA has been doing on textiles. So, it's been interesting to hear where all of this material goes when they're no longer suitable for reuse, okay? And they're, as you said, turned into a one-time use rag or wiper. We need effective systems where textile waste is collected, sorted, and recycled into new fibers. That's what we're headed for. That's what we NEED to be heading for. So, I've just read some pretty shocking statistics. As you've said, Yeah, only 1% of textiles actually gets recycled back into the new textile products. Given all the media attention on climate change and sustainability. Why isn't more happening?

Hilde: That's a very good question. There are many different reasons why there's not more happening. So maybe just to follow the textiles again. Of course, the first thing, textiles need to be collected separately. Otherwise, it's very difficult to give them a circular or valuable destination. That is not happening everywhere and that's not always happening at a large scale. So that is maybe the first point – if you want to turn textiles into something valuable at their end of life, they need to be collected separately.

Then they need to be sorted. So there has to be someone – this is still very much a human activity and it needs to decide is this suitable for the second-hand market or not? Because of course, at TOMRA, you always want to aim for the most circular destination. If a garment can be reworn, of course that has to happen. So, there always has to be someone to assess its suitability for the second-hand market. But if you know that a garment or a piece of textile is not suitable for the second and market, ideally you would like to turn it into new fibres. Then there's this very tricky component, which means that you need to sort your textiles not based on their value on the second-hand market, but on their characteristics. If you are a fiber-to-fiber recycler, you have very specific requirements to the composition of the textiles that you want to process.

That is really where newer technologies, like the ones of TOMRA, come in because you need to sort your textiles based on fiber composition to ensure that you are able to provide this recycler the feedstock with the right characteristics. And the challenge really is to ensure that these technologies for automated sorting of textiles based on composition are available at scale. And that is currently not the case. And I always refer to this as some kind of chicken and egg problem because … [Mithu: as with many things] as with many things, yes, definitely.

Because what we see now is there's not a lot of recycling capacity worldwide. Fiber-to-fiber recycling capacity is still quite a low and it's also very much focused on very, very specific fiber types because the current recyclers out there use mechanical recycling technologies. Mechanical recycling technologies are able to process mostly cotton, wool, and acrylic fibres. So, they have a very, very specific requirement as to their feedstock.

However, most of the textiles that we buy and that we dispose of contain a very large mix of fibers and often also contain synthetic fibers. And these synthetic fibers cannot be recycled using the existing recycling technology. We're all waiting for the day that chemical recycling technologies are available at scale. So, there would be a bigger demand for feedstock for recycling. Hence also adding to the urgency of scaling up automated sorting technologies like TOMRA here. That is very, very much as long – as there is no demand, it's very difficult to make the investments in automated sorting technology or at least to have a business case that is positive to make these investments.

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Mithu: And the fact is, they were all waiting. We don't have time to wait. What we can do now, we should. And maybe it also goes back to design-for-recycling. I know that you're working with some fashion brands to look at those alternatives as well. How can you, as a fabric manufacturer, how can you design-for-recycling which might actually be able to take care of the technologies that are available today while we are waiting and not put everything on waiting on the future … because think we don't have much time to waste. Actually, we have no time to waste.

Hilde: We have absolutely no time to waste. And indeed, there are already quite some initiatives, of course, on design-for-recycling. However, what we see there is that there's also quiet, I would just say, a dilemma between recyclability and durability. That is very interesting discussion within the textiles industry and with, for instance, European government at wants to set targets on, on circular textiles.

If you would really focus on durability, we would from now on only by polyester, because polyester textiles will last for a very long amount of time. The big challenge is, as I mentioned at the start, it's our behavior because we have these textiles that could actually last for a long period of time, but we treat them as disposable products. So, therefore, very quickly they will end up at the sorter. And there, we then find that with current technologies they are not recyclable. So, there's this tension between, on the one hand, durability and recyclability.

Mithu: Got it. That's a very good point. And I think we see that in other – let's say, packaging. I guess fashion is also a sort of packaging that we are packaging ourselves within. So, we see that in other product packaging. That's a very good point. The value chain needs a major … yeah, let's call it a style makeover, for lack of a better way of saying it. And in preparation for our discussion today, I came across a fact from the United Nations Environmental Programme. As you know, that they're also working on some treaties that would minimize plastic waste, if not eliminate it. 300 million people are employed in the textile industry, many of which are women. I imagine that these women are supporting entire families. How can we create a circular textile industry that helps these women and their families?

Hilde: I think this is always very tricky. But this also illustrates it's not only about circularity, but it's really about the broader systems change. I mean, the definition of circularity is not recycling alone. It is about using less, using longer, using cleaner materials, and then, of course, if there's no other use, recycle it. And it is a quite a fundamental change.

If you say, well, we should produce less, but produce in a better way, produced under better conditions with better wages for workers to allow for better livelihoods for families in producing countries. But that is, of course, quite a big change. It's really about seeing the value of materials and of these products in a different way. And also, very much like your analogy between the textiles industry and of course, the fact that textiles are the packaging, let's say, for our body. I think there's also a more obvious link between the two industries as well.

Currently if you would go to any big fashion store, you will see a lot of recycled claims in the store. And that is also maybe why many people think that there's actually more textile recycling going on than there actually is. And the fact is that all these recycled claims – or many of them – relate to the recycling of bottles into polyester fibers. So PET bottles are being collected, which is, of course, great. And then they are being turned into polyester fibers that are being used to produce textiles.

On one hand, this is, of course a great practice. However, I hope this is more like a stepping stone towards actual fiber-to-fiber recycling because the big challenge with these PET bottles being turned into textiles is PET bottles could stay within the bottle cycle endlessly. However, if they are turned into polyester textiles, as we just mentioned before, there is no technology at scale yet now to recycle polyester textiles. In that sense, these bottles to contribute to, let's say, the recycling targets of fashion brands, they do leave the cycle the more circular system of PET bottles.

Mithu: Yeah. So basically what you're saying … and something we've talked about before … is we need to get to fiber-to-fiber recycling. And not PET / bottle-to-fiber, which is what we see more at what we see today because in the end it all comes down to virgin resources. If we take the PET from the bottles and put it into textiles, and they're not recycled in more than one loop, then we're not keeping things in a closed loop.

There are many benefits to getting to fiber-to-fiber and keeping the bottles in bottle-to-bottle recycling. Fiber-to-fiber will help actually preserve Mother Earth, which is what we need to do as quickly as possible. And I'm really glad you brought up this human welfare aspect. Sometimes we forget that – and I think it is something that needs to be taken into consideration when looking at all of the circularity and closing the loop.

I truly believe there is a way to achieve symbiosis of making all the systems work. It happened hundreds and millions of years ago. Why shouldn't we be able to be possible today? Before you go, I'd like to ask you a final but a little bit more personal question. And I see this in my own family, and you said think you said you have children. What would your advice thinking about consumerism now, what would be your advice to a teenager who wants to go shopping for a new outfit? What they should what should they be looking for?

Hilde: Yes – I get this question a lot also from people that are not teenagers themselves, but that just are looking for the way to shop guilt-free. And there really is no silver bullet here. I think that the best thing that a teenager or any person can do is just really re-consider purchases. Is it something I need? Is it something I want to use for a long time? Often when we make these considerations, we might actually find out that maybe there's not really a need to go shopping. And, and if we go shopping, I mean, it's at least what I was telling myself – if you buy something, then buy the thing you really, really want instead of going for a second-best option because you think it might be more sustainable.

The most sustainable thing we can all do is ensure that we, in the end, consume less. So, if you consume, it should be something that you're absolutely in love with and you will use for a very long amount of time. I think that is really what is most important. As a notion to this teenager, because I know that sometimes it's also very depressing or demotivating to hear all the negative impacts in the fashion industry.

And as you mentioned, I work with fashion brands, but also with textile collectors, with textile sources, with textile recyclers and garment manufacturers as well. And I would just like to emphasize that the positive thing is: There are no bad guys in this industry. That is really my experience. Everyone is in this industry with the right intentions. I mean, if you talk about circularity, there's no one that will say that it's not needed. I think we're still on our way to finding the right way to organize this. I definitely think that there's a huge need for investments in infrastructure, in sorting, and recycling of textiles to ensure that there are circular opportunities for textiles at the end of their life.

But to this teenager, I would really like to emphasize that. Keep up the hopes. Of course, investigating, for instance, the textiles industry. Where do your garments go when you dispose of them? Ask questions, but also know that there are many, many people throughout the whole value chain that have the best intentions. I'm a strong believer that this transition to more circularity will happen.

Mithu: Hilde, on this very positive note, thank you very much. We appreciate the time you've taken that we know you're very busy. Lots of insights, especially the focus on consumerism. Excellent stuff. So, thank you very much. And with that, we wish you a wonderful vacation, a well-deserved vacation, and we look forward to talking to you again.

Hilde: Mithu, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Mithu: For our listeners who would like to hear more about textiles or recycling, please check in. We have two episodes that were streamed out in October and November of 2022, which might give you an oversight of the entire recycling process. Thanks very much and thanks again, Hilde.

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