IMPROVE STATUS OF CIRCULAR CLOTHING
Circular clothing, questions to consider?
We should embrace all the great initiatives to make the clothing industry more sustainable:
Linear consumption is outdated.
BUT
Is recycled always circular?
GUARANTEES
the use of high-quality recycled base content
100% circularity?
Clothes made of different types of high-quality recycled content is regularly communicated and offered as ‘circular clothing’. Is it justified to promote this clothing as circular? Average users will have the idea that the use of this product at end-of-life will be returned to the textile chain in a comparable manner. But is this a correct assumption?
Recycled content can still end up in incinerator
What is reality
If clothing made up of different high-quality recycled base content is not disassembled into mono streams at end-of-life, high-quality processing is usually not possible. Manual separation with seam ripper, scissors or knife is not possible because it is too laborious and therefore too expensive. Also use of accessories such as high-vis striping, seam tapes, coatings as well as some zippers, logos and transfers make high-quality processing usually impossible. This with as consequence that in a very limited number of cases low-quality processing may still be applicable. However, the chance is even greater that this, as circularly qualified clothing, will be destroyed and nothing has changed compared to the current situation.
If there is no plan, guideline or roadmap how, where and who will disassemble and upcycle this so-called circular product at end-of-life, it still remains somewhat like greenwashing.
As part of the textile supply chain, let us jointly protect ourselves from such an image..
YES, WE CAN
YOU CAN SEPARATE WITHIN 60 SECONDS
Even if processing of textile waste with integrated microwave technology is not yet on large scale available, a future sustainable / circular design will be possible.
