Case study
A collective approach is transforming end-of-life
opportunities in textile waste, as BERNADETTE
CASEY reports.
The thread of a good idea
U
biquitous yet often underestimated,
the presence of textiles in our lives
is profound; they cover us from
within moments of our birth until we are
laid to rest. They adorn our houses and our
offices; they line our transport and protect
us from the elements.
Both hedonic and utilitarian at the same
time, our clothes are the material extension
of ourselves, the most visual identifier of
our clique and social position. They act
as a type of short code, reflecting our
personality and communicating to the world
so much about who we are and who we
want people to think we are.
In Australia spending on clothing
has topped $19 billion per annum with
commercial textile consumption estimated
to be 40 times greater than that of domestic.
According to the CSIRO (Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation), about 100 million tonnes
of textile fibre waste is generated each
year of which a significant chunk will end up
in landfill.
It’s these exorbitant figures that, nine
years ago, prompted the establishment
of The Formary, a textile research and
development company focused on end-oflife textiles. Initially upcycling waste textiles,
our first market offering was hats made from
used coffee sacks – the aim being to extract
the very best value from the waste textile by
extending its application beyond what it is
generally used for.
From that small start, we leveraged
our way through the door of global coffee
giant Starbucks, which was looking at how
it could reuse some of its coffee sacks in
its cafés. Its issue was it did not want the
small fibres from the sacks floating around
in people’s coffee cups. It engaged The
Formary to come up with solutions beyond
the usual.
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WoJo was one of the solutions we developed,
a hard-wearing upholstery fabric made from
recycled jute coffee sacks blended with high
quality wool. The development became a
global endeavour as the project was moved
from the US, where there was negligible
wool processing capability, to Europe where
Starbucks has a major distribution centre
in Amsterdam and where there was also
spinning and weaving capability close by. We
launched WoJo with Starbucks in its flagship
store in Mayfair, London. This fabric won
awards from Prince Charles and television’s
Grand Designs guru Kevin McCloud.
All good stuff; we were feeling pretty
chuffed with our effort, until we saw
Starbucks’ warehouse. We realised that
upcycling the sacks into upholstery fabric
could not possibly deal with the scale of
waste jute coming through. No sooner than
we could take 1000 kilograms out of the
warehouse, the supply would be replenished.
To make matters worse this warehouse
was just one of six Starbucks has in the US
alone. It became obvious to us that, in order
to address the vast amounts of textile waste
generated, we needed to take a different
approach. We needed to design not
individual solutions but a system that could
match the volume.
Every year manufacturers are producing
80 billion garments – a 400 percent jump
from just 20 years ago. So, when we have
worn the latest outfits, and moved on to the
next season, where does billions of dollarsworth of clothing go?
Global figures show upcycling and
re-engineering of clothing achieves
about a one percent dent in our clothing
consumption. It’s great for beautiful pieces
or lovely fabrics that you want to endure as
it extends the wearability of a garment for
a period. But we still need to address what
happens at its end-of-life.
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Case study
It became obvious to us that in order to address the
vast amounts of textile waste generated, we needed
to take a different approach. We needed to design
not individual solutions, but a system that could
match the volume.
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Case study
Consumer awareness is growing thanks to
a raft of new documentaries (The True Cost,
Thread, The Next Black) and Greenpeace
campaigns such as Detox My Fashion and
Little Monsters. They present a clothing
system on the brink of collapse, while
our seemingly insatiable appetite for new
clothes shows no sign of slowing down.
Consumers have been donating used
clothing to charity for over 100 years, so the
concept of clothing as a valued resource is
well embedded in society, and consumers
will make the effort to travel to charity
shops or donation bins, rather than simply
placing their old clothes in the rubbish. They
expect similar, or better, from commercial
companies – landfilling end-of-life textiles just
does not meet with consumer expectation.
Legacy is another important
consideration for organisations. Polyester, of
which much of our clothing and the majority
of corporate clothing is made, does not
break down in landfills. A polyester garment
assigned to landfill is still going to be there
more than 100 years from now. Businesses
are beginning to look at what impact this
could have on their brands and reputation.
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Last year New Zealand Post approached The
Formary to develop a broader approach,
a model that could scale to match the
problem. They invited other prominent NZ
brands – Air New Zealand, Fonterra, Skycity
and The Warehouse Group – to the party
to provide critical mass of volume and
similar textile type, contributing sufficient
feedstock to support an end-of-life supply
chain. It became the New Zealand Textile
Reuse Program.
Most of the organisations involved had
made some attempts to address their textile
waste, but individual company initiatives,
while a good start, are unlikely to scale to
the volume required.
Forming a collaboration of like-minded
businesses shares the cost, making viable
solutions and implementation more
affordable, and it can provide the critical
mass to create the systems change needed.
The Formary, as project lead, was
supported by New Zealand Post as
the corporate lead; they invited other
organisations to the program. We have completed stage one of the
program, which involved auditing each
organisation’s textile waste streams to
understand the volumes for each fibre
stream and identifying existing processing
capability, as well as its medium- to longterm processing capability (including
emerging technologies) and designing the
reprocessing model.
We have now reached stage two of the
project, which is establishing an aggregation
centre for the collection of the textiles.
From the one press release issued
on the program, The Formary received
numerous approaches from Australian
companies also facing the same issues,
and looking for scalable and enduring
solutions for their textile waste. With
stage one successfully completed in New
Zealand, The Formary is now establishing
an Australian Textile Reuse Program.
That’s not to say Australia hasn’t had a
history in reusing textiles; during World War
II there was a global shortage of textiles
due to the demand for, among other
things, military uniforms, blankets, tents,
packs and bandages.
In that period, the textile recycling
business boomed as there was large
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Case study
Every year manufacturers are producing 80 billion
garments – a 400 percent jump from just 20 years ago.
So, when we have worn the latest outfits, and moved
on to the next season, where does billions of dollarsworth of clothing go?
demand for the resource. But when
the war finished, the demand for textile
reprocessing plummeted and technology
stalled. The solutions available in the market
right now are mostly old school mechanical
breakdown of garments from which you get
a shorter fibre and, as a result, lower grade
products like moving blankets, insulation
and fillers.
The good news is in recent years there
has been considerable investment going
into new technologies to recover the
fibres from waste textiles. Europe and
the US are leading the charge driven by
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investment into circular economy initiatives
to better utilise finite resources and reduce
environmental impacts.
These fibre-to-fibre technologies are
quickly becoming available and, having
visited Australia earlier this year, we were
impressed with the high level of textile
knowledge within Australian corporate
organisations. There is now an opportunity
to connect the system together and make
the step change required.
Our textile consumption is increasing
year on year while end-of-life solutions
are limited and disconnected. This issue
will continue to grow and compound as
corporate businesses expand, and retail
demand for clothing increases. Developing
the necessary capability to convert
currently underutilised textile resources
into valuable feedstock for a range of
industries makes good economic and
environmental sense.
The Textile Reuse Program connects
the pieces together. The collaboration
provides scale to support supply chains and
we engage stakeholders from corporate
companies to government organisations,
waste disposal businesses and processors.
We continue to work to attract investment
to pull through new technologies, enabling
us to take the outputs and convert them to
inputs for a range of industries, reducing
ecological impacts and extending the life of
resources. ■
Bernadette Casey is creative director of
The Formary, www.theformary.com.
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