The clothing we discard is a problem. How do we fix that? | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on August 21, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Globally, we throw out about 92 million tons of clothing each year according to an analysis of data by The Ellen MacCarther Foundation. That discarded clothing ends up either in landfills or is burnt, both of which have undesirable environmental impacts. While many clothing materials are biodegradable in their original form, most clothing today is made up of a blend of different fibers, and once blended, it’s hard to break down. What’s the solution here? Jules Lennon, fashion lead with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, joins The Excerpt to discuss innovations and best practices in the way we address textile waste.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is August 21st, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Fashion comes and goes. So what happens to the clothes you no longer want because they're out of style? Globally, we throw out about 92 million tons of clothing each year according to an analysis of data by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That discarded clothing ends up either in landfills or is burnt, both of which have undesirable environmental impacts. While many clothing materials are biodegradable in their original form, most clothing today is made up of a blend of different fibers, and once blended, it's hard to break down. What's the solution here? Here to discuss innovations and best practices in the way we address the issues surrounding textile waste is Jules Lennon, fashion lead with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Thanks for being on The Excerpt, Jules.

Jules Lennon:

Great to see you. Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

First, I want to give our audience a good sense of the scope of the issue here. We don't look at landfills or see the incinerators at work. Why are these two ways of disposing of unwanted clothing so problematic?

Jules Lennon:

Today, pretty much the entire global economy still operates under the same model. We take resources from the ground to make products and materials that are wanted or needed, and then after an incredibly short amount of time, we get rid of them. So it's a take, make, waste, linear economy. And as a result, every year, the fashion industry is actually missing out on hundreds of billions of dollars of valuable materials and contributing significantly to waste and pollution. In fact, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfill or incinerated every single second. So just think about how many that is just in this short time we've been having this conversation.

We are making more clothes than ever, but we're using them less. We're significantly contributing to biodiversity loss due to soil degradation or waterway pollution that's caused by raw material production methods as well as intensive washing and dying processes.

In recent years, many businesses across the fashion industry have started to take action to address these environmental issues. For example, trying to reduce carbon emissions and water use. And these efforts are essential, but if we want to create a thriving nature-positive fashion industry, we need a much more radical transformation of the way that products are designed, the way they're made, and the way they're used. And that's when we need a circular economy.

Dana Taylor:

What are the biggest sticking points for recycling the clothing through donations?

Jules Lennon:

So I guess there's two different things there. One is that today, actually less than 1% of all are actually recycled back into new clothing after use. And that's principally because of the way they're designed from the outset. And they're not designed from the outset to be able to be disassembled, to be repaired, to be reused, and ultimately be remade back into new clothes, whether that's due to the material choices or the components that are added or the manufacturing choices, which make it difficult to disassemble and remake those garments.

At the same time, the other thing that you're sort of touching on is, today separate collection systems are underdeveloped. So the vast majority of products are not collected separately, which means they have very little chance of a productive afterlife. And when they are disposed of as part of mixed household waste, they're not sorted out, and they are often then instead landfill, incinerated, or abandoned into the environment. And textile waste can also end up being burned in open pits, dumped onto beaches, into rivers, seas, or disposed of in unsanitary landfills or dump sites. And these pathways all lead to release of pollutants, including hazardous chemicals which can threaten species and habitats.

Dana Taylor:

A team of researchers at the University of Delaware recently developed a technique capable of breaking down blended fibers, which is a stubborn part of the problem of discarded clothing. Is this solution scalable?

Jules Lennon:

When we think about a circular economy for fashion, what we are looking for is products to be used more, that they're made to be made again, and that they're made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs. So this means a couple of things. It means not only redesigning the products of the future, but also the processes, the services, the supply chains, and the business models that will deliver those products and keep them in use.

And to achieve that combination effect, there's kind of three drivers that would achieve a systems level transition to a circular economy for fashion, circular design, increased collection sorting infrastructure, and also the uptake of circular business models, things like rental, resale, repair, and remaking. And when it comes to this design side, products being made to be made again, then both the products and the materials that are designed and manufactured, they need to be done so in a way from the outset that we know they then can be disassembled, so they can be reused, they can be remade, they can be recycled. And it's also important that the business model that those products will be delivered in is considered hand-in-hand with the design stage.

Dana Taylor:

I want to stay with this for a moment. Can you define the principles of a circular economy so that we have a clear understanding of how it affects the fashion industry and how they can apply and use that framework?

Jules Lennon:

So a circular economy has three principles, eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials, and regenerate nature. And when we start to think about fashion, that means products are used more, they're made to be made again, and they're made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs. So if we take an everyday garment, like a pair of jeans, I'm wearing one right now, for that pair of jeans to be fit for a set economy, firstly, all the materials that go into making that pair of jeans, instead of harming nature, should regenerate nature by design.

Then there should be infrastructure and services around that to ensure that that pair of jeans can be used many, many times, whether it's because it's been designed to be durable and repairable and will be worn many, many times by the same user, or whether there's rental infrastructure, resale infrastructure, remaking infrastructure. So that same pair of jeans can be threaded through the lives of many people. And then once that pair of jeans has been worn many, many, many times, it should have been designed at the outset to be able to be disassembled and recycled back into a new pair of jeans.

So that combination of redesign coupled with the services, the supply chains, and the business models to keep those products in use is what we're looking for in a circular economy for fashion.

Dana Taylor:

I mentioned the team of researchers at the University of Delaware and their development of this new technique capable of breaking down blended fabrics. Are there other promising technologies here in helping to stem textile waste?

Jules Lennon:

Rivets are difficult to remove for recyclers. And as a result, typically large parts of the upper fabric of jeans are cut off and then landfilled and incinerated. But actually through the jean redesign, what we saw that was that they could be eliminated entirely or substituted with innovations, things like [inaudible 00:07:53], reinforced stitching, or embroidery techniques, which means that technological solutions exist today to be able to eliminate rivets while at the same time delivering jeans that still have the style and stretch that is required.

At the same time, while for some criteria it's clear that it is no longer a question of technical capability, but a true design choice, there are still remaining design challenges and material innovation gaps to bridge. So one example of that is to be able to deliver jeans that have the style and stretch that customers are perhaps looking for to have the comfort maybe of a really skinny jean while still meeting all the requirements of The Jeans Redesign proved really challenging, and only one of the hundred participants were able to do that. So while great progress is being made on the design side, there are still definitely challenges to overcome.

Dana Taylor:

Jules, is our voracious appetite for clothing part of the problem? And realistically, is there a way to address that aspect without infringing on people's individual rights?

Jules Lennon:

Today, we're making more clothes than ever and we're using them less. And we know that to achieve a circular economy for fashion, we need continued efforts on product design and we need continued efforts on post-consumer recycling, but also we need to match those with similar investment and ambition level on the whole range of solutions. And that includes things like circular business models. Ultimately, businesses have the power to shape desire, to shape culture, to shape trends. And our research shows that circular business models, things like rental, repair, resale, remaking, could actually grow to 23% of the market by 2030, and in doing so would represent a 700 billion US dollar market opportunity. So that's a really exciting place to be able to play.

Dana Taylor:

King Charles, when he was still Prince Charles, convened the campaign for wool. It was launched back in 2010 to tout the benefits of natural wool, of biodegradable material over synthetic fabrics. Has the fashion industry latched on to the importance of using biodegradable materials? Where does that stand?

Jules Lennon:

Materials are a really interesting lens to look at, especially if you start to think about the circular economy as a system solution framework, trying to tackle big challenges like climate change. So if we think about today, the efforts to tackle the climate crisis have focused on transitioning to renewable energy complimented by energy efficiency, and that's crucial and totally consistent with the circular economy.

And so if we think about the fashion industry and the role it plays there, there are two perspectives we can take. One is design, and the other is how our clothes are enjoyed and use. So from a design perspective, if we switch to regenerative methods of textile production in the field, this can help farmers of cotton and other natural fibers prepare for and then adapt to hotter, wetter, more extreme growing conditions that are experienced and expected in a 1.5 degree warmer world. At the same time, they can contribute to sequestering carbon in the ground. So as an example, through our demonstration project, The Jeans Redesign, we saw brands like reformation use cellulose based fibers with regenerative outcomes for nature at farm level, including increased carbon sequestration in the soil and improved native vegetation stocks.

Dana Taylor:

And finally, what would you like consumers to consider when they're purchasing new clothes and when they're discarding old clothes?

Jules Lennon:

So firstly, in a circular economy, there should be no bad choices for them, and that really hinges on business aid actions supported by policy change. But as a customer, you can really interrogate what incentives are being offered to you. So for example, if a business has a resale platform and they're encouraging you to engage with that, they could do that in a number of ways. They might offer you a voucher off another circular business model offering. For example, "Use our resale platform, and here's some money off trying our rental scheme." Or, "Here's a voucher to get something repaired or let us help you resell something else." Any of those type of actions would indicate they're actively trying to grow their circular business models. They're trying to move it away from a niche activity to actually it becoming a mainstream revenue generating activity for them, meaning reducing production and consumption of finite raw materials.

At the same time, they could, for that same resale platform, offer you money off their traditional linear products, maybe a voucher to buy something new in their stores. That would indicate that their circular business model offering still remains a niche or a bolt on activity, or is being used to fuel their linear business. So that's something that you can think about as a customer. An example of where this has done well is, for example, the brand GANNI. GANNI designed exclusive items for their rental platform GANNI Repeat. So if a customer wanted to access those designs, they're incentivized to actually try rental instead of buying.

Dana Taylor:

Jules, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.

Jules Lennon:

Thank you so much for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green for production assistant. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.