Facts and Policies on Textiles

Friday afternoon a number of Dutch Professors, experts and business people were together to propose an input for the new Dutch Government to be formed after the March 17th elections. I was the convener of the meeti ng and the output of our work shall come soon. Please feel free to share your fears and wishes (even if you are not Dutch or live in the Netherlands). My point is in this article: what facts do we take when we analyse the problem.

The first fact that comes to mind is that textiles is the second most polluting industry in the world. Well to start these figures (as orders of magnitude). Each person in the world consumes 700 Kg Food a year (waste included), 160 kg of paper, 200 kg of plastic around 300 Kg of steel and construction wood and over 3000 kg of petrol (plastics and textiles included). Textile consumption is 20kg per person a year. Is textiles then the second most polluting sector? I doubt it. Food requires far more land and water. All other industries require water and energy and also fossil ressources. I do not want to underestimate the impact of textiles (it is too big), nor bury the call to action (that is urgent), but these type of calls (second most polluting) and those figures may help to advocate urgency and create a call for action, but it does not help to see what action to take. The most effective is to buy better, hence buy less. But we do hardly now how to buy better and thus less.

A second example is the more precise figure of the amount of water required to produce one kilo of cotton. My colleagues Kooistra e.a. (2006) were amongst the first to highlight the volume of cotton to produce a kilo of cotton. A quick search on google shows estimates of 8000 to 20000 liters per kilo of cotton, or 2000 to 3000 liters per T-Shirt. Some studies put those figures in perspective by comparing it with other crops (rice uses slightly less, wine and almonds more), but one cannot substitute cotton with rice or wine. More relevant is the comparison with other fibres: flax, hemp and tercel (cellulose) use far less water. But this comparison is unfair: flax and hemp grow in temperate regions with more rainfall and less evaporation. Both fibers have other (less desired properties) and are more expensive to cultivate. More relevant are also comparisons between countries and field management, because cotton can indeed require between 5000 and 20.000 liters depending on geography, season, and cultivation methods. But that does not imply that the methods in Israel can be transposed in Uzbekistan.

In the recently submitted GreenDeal 3.2. proposal "Euridice", under Horizon2020 call by WUR and 35 partners we have advocated the need to publicly invest in better data. Better data is longitudinal data, it is geographically distributed data and it is along the whole value chain, and it should ultimately help to make better choices. Better data is not a simple task. It probably requires a substantial investment and operating costs to develop it and run it (likely tens of millions to develop an millions to maintain it). It is advised to combine data with a reliable and almost compulsory monitoring system. I guess that my round-table of last Friday will advocate to connect monitoring to the establishment of Extended Producer Responsibility.

Please react (in English or Dutch) if you have thoughts on a Circular Textile policy in the Netherlands after March 17th.