The Circular Textile System

Photo credit: Martine Franck

A circular textile system is one in which products are made of recycled and recyclable materials both from the textile industry and other industries. The original products are designed for minimal waste, longevity of use, and the ease of deconstruction at the point of collection and sorting. One of the most important tenets of circularity is to keep garments cycling at their highest and best use before they are downgraded. Designing out waste, reducing waste to landfill and retaining the energy embodied within products cycling inside the system reduces GHG emissions across the value chain. 

Numerous companies are exploring circularity to capitalize on the second sale of their products, reduce their production costs, and manage risks associated with not taking end of life responsibility for their manufactured products. But the system at large requires new technologies for tracking, sorting and regenerating materials, as well as a massive shift in how we approach design and customer engagement to enable collections and recommerce.

And while we’ve seen a lot of advances in the space, there are also limitations to the current frameworks for circularity, most notably the social considerations of a circular system. On the latest episode of Unspun, Danielle, Lauren and Catherine discuss the circular textile system: its advances and limitations and where it needs to go next.

Resale as the entry point

We can’t discuss circularity in the industry without going back to some of the early adopters of branded resale: Eileen Fisher and Patagonia. Eileen Fisher launched a circularity initiative called Green Eileen in 2009 that was a take-back program for employees. It evolved into a customer-wide initiative reclaiming over one million garments by its rebrand in 2016. Patagonia was also an early adopter of take-back programs with their Worn Wear initiative and other brands have followed suit. Eileen Fisher Renew and Worn Wear showed other brands the possibilities that come with capitalizing off of the resale of their own products. 

A major turning point and more recent milestone for the industry was Levi’s secondhand initiative which launched at the end of 2020. This take-back and resale program shows the potential of mainstream brands incorporating circularity into their businesses. Levi’s in particular have a high resale value and their ability to capitalize off this second sale is an important indicator for the industry. 

“[LUXURY BRANDS] ARE VIEWING IT AS LESS OF A THREAT AND MORE OF A MARKET OPPORTUNITY”  

Luxury brands have been wary of the resale market for fear of cannibalization and losing their core buyers to resale channels. However, brands have noticed the exponential growth of the resale market and the opportunity to capitalize off of it. An important player in shifting the perception of secondhand luxury is TheRealReal, whose marketing and shopping experience shows that just because items are secondhand doesn’t mean they are any less of a luxury item. 

Resale is beneficial to various stakeholders and has the potential to reduce the fashion industry’s impact on the environment. Whether or not this potential is fulfilled depends on how brands scale these initiatives. Resale on its own doesn’t address unsustainable levels of consumption and production. If brands plan to counterbalance their original production and sales with resale, some of the industry’s impact on the environment can be mitigated. While brands are exhibiting greater openness to resale and increasing how much they promote it, it is unlikely they will make resale a significant portion of their overall sales. 

Of course, recommerce is one small component of the system, but it may serve as a strong primer to a circular economy. Recommerce requires the industry to engage customers and partners to co-create a new system, from take-back programs to reverse logistics partnerships and for collections and sorting.

The challenge with regenerative fibers 

Resale does not address the full system of textiles circularity, as products can only cycle until the end of their useful life. We need the technology to recover, sort, and recycle fibers that will ultimately allow for the widespread use of regenerative fibers. The challenge comes with scaling this technology due to the considerable cost associated with development. Even if brands are willing to invest into these technologies, there is still the challenge of implementing it throughout their supply chains which is a much more manual and time-consuming process.

“IT’S IMPORTANT TO STRESS THE NEED FOR ALL ACTORS IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY TO ACT TOGETHER WHEN TRYING TO CREATE CIRCULAR SYSTEMS.” 

Because the technology for regenerative fibers is not widely available nor easily scalable, the costs of using newly developed regenerative fibers can greatly outweigh the costs of virgin fibers. As such, there is little financial incentive for individual brands to buy into this new model. If brands won’t move collectively towards adopting regenerative fibers, the costs of these fibers won’t decrease. And if the costs of these fibers don’t decrease, brands won’t adopt these new fibers. This negative feedback loop will deter important steps towards a circular system. 
Add to the mix of challenges the issues with synthetic fibers like polyester and acrylic. Even if we’re able to recover and regenerate these fibers, we are circulating something that is toxic. Synthetic clothes now account for 60 percent of the global apparel industry’s annual fiber consumption and 35 percent of microplastics in the ocean. Research links not only the washing of clothes by also the cutting, dyeing and finishing processes in the production of those clothes to the release of microplastics. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, estimates that clothing care contributes half a million tonnes of primary microplastics a year. But the reality for the industry right now is that polyester is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of textile regeneration due to economics––there is no longer a significant price differential between virgin and recycled polyester.

Circularity is one piece of the puzzle 

However, circularity is only one piece of the puzzle—it’s not enough to create circular value chains—they also have to be equitable to be truly sustainable. Recently, there’s been an increase in placeholders for social considerations in circularity frameworks, though it isn’t clear what the industry believes these placeholders need to expand into. 

To learn more about current approaches to circularity along with the limitations and opportunities of this system and what it’s going to take to move beyond placeholders into robust, integrated frameworks, tune into the latest episode of Unspun.