CIWM Fellow and Stuff4Life founder, John Twitchen, responds to the Changing Markets Foundation’s recent assertion that recycled content polyester is ‘greenwashing’, saying that clothes made from polyester could soon be recycled back into ‘as-good-as-new, high-quality fabrics and garments’ right here in the UK.
Having worked in the waste and resources sector for over a quarter of a century and striving for a ‘world beyond waste’ throughout, in my opinion the greatest challenges faced by the sector are best summed up in two succinct lines:
- getting manufacturers to make stuff from recycled and recyclable materials; and
- getting consumers to think before they buy stuff, and to choose value over cost.
Both are much easier said than done, however some of the steps now being taken by major multinational brands and cottage industries alike to address both these points should be celebrated, not castigated.
The truth of the matter is that every material made for use as clothing has an impact. These impacts are varied but all are significant. There is no magic answer.
Because, according to the mantra, action speaks louder than words.
A few years ago, I was staring at a hi-vis vest that had ended up on the side of the road, which I mused must have fallen off a builder’s van after being used to warn of an overhanging ladder. Wondering what happened to all the PPE and workwear our industry and many other industries rely on, where safety is a front-and-centre issue, when it reached the end of its life, I decided to find out.
Of course, the life expectancy of the humble hi-vis can be relatively short given the sorts of tasks these essential garments are exposed to every day. Picking up bins, filling holes in the road, mending railways and saving lives at sea. Harsh environments, one and all. Safety first.
Creating Stuff4Life
My inquisitiveness was in part inspired by my work with innovative sportswear company Presca, who were challenging the status quo and making high performance sportswear from mechanically recycled plastic bottles. Typically, 8-10 single-use plastic bottles make up Presca’s shirts, converting discarded items worth less than a penny each, and a life expectancy of a few moments, into a high-quality garment with a street value of £30 or more and a life expectancy of many years.
However, at the end of their life, these products currently face potentially the same destiny as any other polyester or mixed fibre garment – incineration or landfill. There was literally no infrastructure in place, nor any drivers existing, to recycle polyester fabric.
Partnering with my university pal and fellow environmental sciences graduate, Miles Watkins, we set out to create a solution to this obvious shortcoming.
Stuff4Life was born and, after much time spent on research and trials working with the University of Teesside, Presca and Amey, this month we are set to recycle the first batches of polyester workwear in partnership with Arco, the UK’s only integrated services and safety products business. We’re really excited.
Least-worst
I therefore read with interest the recent article on Circular Online about a new video and campaign by the Changing Markets Foundation. It expressed several views, among them that recycling single use plastic bottles into polyester fabric and made into clothes was ‘downcycling’, ‘a charade’ and ‘greenwashing’, in part because these clothes cannot then be recycled.
Bottles, it says, should instead be made back into bottles – the principle of which is hard to disagree with, although the drivers aren’t quite all there yet and doing something that gives them a positive value is, well, positive… especially compared to landfill. Although my starting point is: do we need that plastic bottle…? But that’s clearly a whole other discussion for another day.
The campaign and video do not present any solutions other than companies should instead be reducing reliance on synthetic fibres at source.
The campaign and video do not present any solutions other than companies should instead be reducing reliance on synthetic fibres at source.
The truth of the matter is that every material made for use as clothing has an impact. These impacts are varied but all are significant. There is no magic answer.
For example: globally, we consume approximately 80 billion pieces of clothing annually; a cotton t-shirt requires 3,000 litres of water to make it, while going organic requires 25% more land; over 70 million trees are cut down each year to produce viscose for fabrics; but synthetic fibres can require 10 times as much energy to produce compared to natural fibres. Read more on the Fashion4Good website or this article.
Built to last
However, at the heart of the problem is how well things are made, how they perform and whether they can be recycled at the end of their (hopefully extended) life.
This is the essence of Stuff4Life – as a business, our goal is not only to recycle polyester using standard chemical processes to recover and return the base monomers to polyester manufacturers ready to be made back into as-new materials, largely using infrastructure that already exists.
It is also to understand why something has reached the end of its life, how long it has been in flight and how this could be improved, and how both the product and the business model could be changed to reduce complexity and improve recyclability.
At the heart of the problem is how well things are made, how they perform and whether they can be recycled at the end of their (hopefully extended) life
And it is to ensure that the carbon impact of the product can be reduced – in the case of polyester recycling, an estimated 60% reduction in carbon intensity compared to virgin fibre manufacture.
It sounds simple and, like many circular economy business propositions, it is. Except the drivers need to be there, which is where initiatives such as Textiles 2030 play a crucial role.
There will also be very important research needed into issues around fibre length, fibre quality and their impact. While there are a multitude of studies looking into these issues and covering different fibres from a range of source materials, it is clearly something that must be addressed without delay.
This is because billions of garments are already in circulation which are contributing to this impact. Literal end-of-pipe solutions are urgently required while the systemic issues are sussed and sorted.
Action speaks louder than words
What we can be reasonably certain of are three things:
- the quality of a garment or product almost certainly has a bearing on its longevity, overall environmental and social impact and fitness-for-purpose;
- synthetic fibres are going to play a critical role in safety equipment, workwear and sportswear for the foreseeable future and recycling them back into high-quality, strong and long fibres is essential; and
- we will struggle to clothe the world just in wool or cotton, but we should work hard to move to bio-based systems that replace and reduce some of the current system impacts.
This is why we are investing in chemical recycling to create as-new monomer feedstock that can be used to make fully recycled, high-quality fibre and support a renaissance in UK manufacturing.
And we won’t need any bottles. We will of course report back on progress, but, in the meantime, why not buy a nice refillable bottle here – every little helps.
