Super sustainability; but closing the loop! - COLLECTION : New part of supply chain ?

After one week of home holidays, today I have started my home office. I had most boring holidays ever, really happy to start working again. The day began by a video call with my unit leader, its always nice to talk with this guy, he is very positive and full with energy.

Its been pretty long time I have been writing on this super sustainability in denim area. Writing here is actually a way of my learning, sharing and getting feedback. However, may be its time to wrap up this topic.

If you are not familiar with super sustainability in denim perception, you may read my below articles -

• How relevant Cradle to Cradle (C2C) in Denim industry?
• Super sustainability; but closing the loop! - a denim perception.
• Super sustainability; but closing the loop! - where is the gap?
• Super sustainability; but closing the loop! - Solutions: Mono material?
• Super sustainability; but closing the loop! - Solutions: Machine Optimization ?

Today I will focus on an important area, which was neglected by our main stream denim industry. The recycling possibilities of denim is higher than other form of garments. To ensure proper recycling treatment, accurate detection of material, and sorting them based on the material categories are necessary.

Today almost every brand produce eco friendly denim where the product standard makes sure the products are making with circular material and environment-friendly chemicals. (eg. Cradle to cradle denim)

However, product standard doesn't track the garment once it is sold to the customer. In order to make the circular loop, disposed product needs to be collected and reutilize to keep the material in same or upper-grade use.

At present, no eco denim producer considered collection of the used garments as a part of regular business practice. ( There are few brands doing it very smaller scale.) As a result, eco denim is disposed of with regular apparel waste stream. Consequently, the benefit of using organic cotton or biodegradable elastane made denim decrease.

           Therefore, how to track these garment and separate them from regular apparels waste? The possible ways are printed label on garments and a universal tracking system. There are two pre-condition that must be taken into consideration during tracking system selection.

Firstly, it should be recycling friendly. Secondly, it should have longevity enough to survive domestic washes, wear, and tear.

 At present, many denim retailers used printed information label on the garments. The Printed label is eco friendly, will stay along with the garments throughout the life cycle. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to identify and sorting this special garments from regular apparels waste stream by the printed label. In this case, a separate collection system needed to be setup.

In-store "take back" program (used garment collection program) can be modified for large scale operation. We can take food waste management as an example to set up an effective in-store apparels waste collection process. Separate collection bin should be placed in-store with the regular apparels collection bin.

In Germany, the beverage industry is using Pfandsystem. The end consumer does deposit a certain amount during their purchase and get amount refund once the used bottle is returned.[1] To collect our special eco friendly denim, pfand system can be introduced to engage the consumer in operation.

In this case, the amount of returned money should be practical and attractive, so that customer get influence to return the used garment. The pfand system should be implanted with the cooperation of other apparels brand. So that customer can return the used denim in any brand or store bin. Otherwise, transporting it to the specific brand store may annihilate the environmental advantages of eco denim by generating extra carbon footprint.

The universal tracking system could be another option. For the example, C2C certified denim garments contain both biological and technical material which create a possibility to embedded the tracking device such as RFID device (Radio-frequency identification), conductive yarn, conductive print, etc. in the garments. The tracking application must be surviving until the whole life cycle of a garment, which is difficult due to use and wash of garments may destroy the electrical structure.

On the other hand, it should be easily detachable and economically viable. Even though there are many innovation going on in textile tracking development, till now no tracking device has been developed for this purpose.

          At present some companies are collecting apparels waste from the customer to recycle. The initiatives are a positive approach towards sustainable fashion. However, most of the brands are doing off-site recycling [2], which has several disadvantages. The brand has no supervision on the second life of their waste.

The people are working on sorting and recycling may not have enough training about certain product characteristics; hence, mistreatment is expected.

Moreover, on-site recycling will allow the brand to get valuable information about their sold product which will help them to improve future product quality. To keep the eco denim in close loop, reuse and recycling should be included in the mainstream supply chain.

So this is very prominent that there is no proper way of collecting used eco certified denim. However, the main challenges are to find out proper reutilization of collected old denim. Mechanical and chemical recycling can be solutions with several limitation. ( I have a wish to write another article on this.)

But what else we can do?

Best way to reduce cotton consumption is, increasing the lifetime of the cotton made product. In the case of denim, this possibility is more practical as the product is made of sturdy fabric and worn look is considered as an aesthetic value.

Some denim brands are already offering denim repair service, where the customer can easily repair their used denim apparels from the store. Introducing repairing service in eco certified denim project will engage the customer more intensely in the sustainable movement.

Now a day, the resale market place is trendy among conscious textile consumer. Apart from the traditional vintage shop, most of the modern resale marketplaces are online-based, thus able to engage a higher number of customer in the process.

There are many advantages to this secondary market place. It is profitable and economically viable. Moreover, it is decreasing the continuous pressure from virgin raw material. Popular lower price fashion retailer H&M founded "Afound" – an outlet brand where they are giving a second life to different fashion brands product at a discounted price.[2]

To align with the circular economy concept, reselling used denim will scaling reuse. Yerdle – a company with "a circular economy powerhouse" slogan, provides the reselling platform. Their service include technology, logistics, and infrastructure to enable brands to run a secondary marketplace. Many leading resale brands, like Patagonia, REI and Eileen Fisher, Arc'teryx and Taylor Stitch, etc. are working with Yerdle solution.

[1] Cf. Online re:newcell AB (ed.) (2019)

[2] Cf. Online: H&M Group (ed.) (2019f)

[1] Cf. Online: Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH (ed.)(2019) 

[2] Recycling done by third party.