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Interviews

Fibersort & textile recycling with Hilde van Duijn

written by Kate

Fibersort is one of many innovation projects happening in the textile recycling sphere. As you might have guessed from the name, it’s about fibre sorting! The project, which ran from 2006-2010, developed a machine to sort used clothing based on fibre composition and colour, using infrared technology. Today’s interview is with Hilde van Duijn who was the project manager for Fibersort. Before we turn to Hilde, let me first give you a little more project info:

Background

Note: this section is paraphrased by me from publicly available information on the Interreg North-West Europe website (the body that provided much of the funding for the Fibersort project).

Fibersort takes non-rewearables discarded clothing (i.e. used clothing unsuitable for resale) and sorts them by composition and colour. The aim is to enable the discarded clothing to turn into quality feedstock that can be recycled into materials for new garments. Otherwise, textiles are downcycled (e.g. industrial wipes, mattress stuffing, car insulation) or incinerated or landfilled.
In North-West Europe, 4.7 million tonnes of textiles are discarded each year. 30% of that is collected, the rest will be incinerated or landfilled with household waste.
Initially a Dutch initiative, Fibersort was a 5-year project largely funded by the EU (Interreg North-West Europe). The project ran from 2016 to 2020 (the development of the technology started in 2008 by Wieland Textiles)

How does Fibersort work?

Clothes are automatically fed onto a conveyor belt, where they are scanned and placed into different buckets. Clothes can be sorted into 90 categories based on composition and colour. Watch the video for a closer look:

Ok, and now to the discussion with Hilde:

What can go into the Fibersort?

We’re most concerned with clothing. In the recycling chain, once the consumer disposes of their clothing, the clothes are taken to a sorting facility. The first step is removing household waste that contaminates the textiles. So please tie up your bag when you get rid of your clothes!

Then in the manual sorting process, workers will determine what is and is non-rewearable (whether it can be resold in the local market or exported elsewhere). The best case scenario is of course rewear. About half of the clothes fall into this category.

Of the remaining non-rewearables, about half can go into a machine like Fibersort. This is because clothes need to be mono-material – that is, only one type of fabric in the garment (whether it is a blend or 100% of one type of fibre). For example, a lined jacket for example is not suitable, nor are things with sequins.

How many Fibersort machines are there?

The proof of concept machine is in a facility in the Netherlands, there is another demo facility in Sweden, and a few in China (not operating at scale). The one in the Netherlands mostly supplies the knitwear brand Loop.a life. The demand for Fibersort is high but there also needs to be more infrastructure to enable the outputs to turn back into garments at scale.

What additional infrastructure is needed?

To understand this we need to think about current recycling processes. Mechanical recycling has existed for years and there are already machines that “cut and clean”. They strip out the hardware (buttons, zips) and labels from textiles. After that, the clothes are turned into clippings, for example 6x6cm size, which is then sold as feedstock for textile to textile recycling.

What doesn’t exist yet is a machine that can detect if the clippings are clean – there is no technology to remove labels. At the moment, wind shifting technology (weight + wind) relies on gravity pulling down heavier clippings with hardware. But it can miss tiny buttons and sequins or a bit of zip. Machines can get messed up if these small contaminants get caught up (plastic will melt) when during the yarn production process.

Labels are another problem. Most of them are polyester and are a different colour from clothes. There will be tiny white fibres in the new yarn if they aren’t removed.

After the Fibersort technology was developed, a new initiative called Textiles 2 Textiles was established to develop and operate a fully integrated sorting and pre-processing facility to turn garments into feedstock for recycling.

How much contamination can there be in the textile recycling process?

The existing technologies can deal with things like polyester sewing thread. But fibre blends and elastane are really problematic. In mechanical recycling, you have to tear the material apart. If elastane warms up, it melts! So a 95% cotton / 5% elastane blend is not a good thing to give to a textile recycler.

But of course the dilemma is in durability. A cotton/polyester blend might work much better for a garment than a 100% cotton because it is much more robust as a fabric.

By the way, workwear is often treated with a finish. This makes it mostly not suitable for mechanical recycling. The chemicals from the finishing will remain if you recycle them the chemicals.

What about something like a cotton/linen blend like I’m wearing today?

Fibre Mood Alix skirt (pleated A line skirt) by Time to Sew in blue cotton linen blend fabric — Fibre Mood Alix skirt (affiliate link) in cotton linen blend

That would be an exceptional blend without a category. If it was cotton-rich then it can be recycled, e.g. 80% cotton / 20% linen. But if it was more 60/40 then it will probably end up downcycled or incinerated. There is not a big market for this specific blend.

The problem with downcycled textile products is that they are often still single-use products. Let’s say you turn something into wipes for industrial purposes or insulation. You cannot do anything more with it when that has been used.

What can consumers do to assist the textile recycling process?

First, buy less. Second, if you want to look at it from a recycling perspective, it is cotton-rich and wool-rich clothes or fabric so you could pick those. This is preferable to anything that is a blend, because that requires chemical recycling technology which is in development at pilot scale. There is no right destination for those garments yet.

There was no thought put into the end of life in the past. Otherwise we would never have things like sequins. Things like lurex thread are also non-recyclable. It stays intact through the whole recycling process. I have a sweater made from feedstock that came from Fibersort and you can still see bits of it running through the sweater.

With thanks to Hilde for taking the time to speak to me.

I hope you enjoyed reading this little glimpse into Fibersort. Whilst every country has their own textile waste practices, for me living in the Netherlands, I think the takeaway is that I can probably be more mindful of the way that I get rid of my stuff. Either make sure it’s good enough to be reworn by someone else. Or if it’s not refashion-able by me, then harvest all the notions from it, and remove any labels before putting it into the textile bin.

Would you like to read more about textile waste? These are some of my other posts – clearly I’m obsessed with waste as much as I am sewing!

Till next time,

Kate x

March 8, 2021 0 comment

Fabric info Interviews Sustainability thoughts

Organic cotton: mythbusting

written by Kate

Of all the sustainability topics out there, the issue of greenwashing is pretty problematic. Organic textiles – especially organic cotton – if certified GOTS, is one of those textiles widely accepted as being “sustainable”. Does that mean it’s better? For me, the social issue around labour is the most important and undoubtedly there are good things about GOTS (for an intro into organic, see my blog post here). When it comes to the environmental angle, there is more than one side of the story. I collated a list of myths I’ve read recently in marketing and Dr Grace Peng did the mythbusting for me.

Scroll to the bottom to read about Grace and why it’s worth listening to her. In this world that is littered with misinformation, I hope it gets you thinking twice about the marketing that you read. The interview is long but I promise it’s a good one!

1. Organic cotton is softer

Cotton is made up of sugars linked together into polymer chains, cellulose. Link the sugars one way, and they are carbohydrates, that we can eat for sustenance. Link them another way, and they become cellulose, which is indigestible to humans.

Longer chains of cellulose are softer. How do you get longer chains? More sunlight and cool nights. This is why cotton is largely grown in arid climates, with predictably hot days and cool nights. Nothing to do with organic.

2. Organic cotton is more eco friendly because it’s 80% rainfed

Rain, at the wrong part of the growing/harvest cycle, is bad for cotton. So cotton is often grown in places where you can count on no rain. It is a crop that takes lots of water which needs to be applied just at the right time, with no rain at random times to mess up your planting and harvest. This is a recipe for water scarcity.

The places where organic cotton’s water needs can be met by rainfall alone is minuscule compared to the places where drought-tolerant GMO cotton can be grown. (GMO cotton is engineered to use less water).

3. Organic contains no nasty chemicals and is pesticide free

Organics use pesticides. Sometimes really nasty ones. But, they are “natural pesticides”. When most organizations test for pesticides, they test only for the ones forbidden by organic standards, the newer synthetic ones.

As an aside, this is also the case in food … I read a paper involving testing for both organic and conventional pesticides. The conclusion was that organic kale had the highest pesticide residue! Kale is a brassica, which means cabbage worms love it. Bt kale resists cabbage worm, but organic kale does not. (see Grace’s blog post on it here)

It’s absolutely crazy that one copper salt is “organic” while another one is “synthetic”, and therefore, not organic. However, they both poison the soil with heavy metals.

Also, growing organic pesticides in another field, grinding it up and applying it is a lot of work… the only difference between the organic and manufactured version of the same pesticide is more land, water and labour. Read here about neem oil which is an allowable plant based pesticide.

Cotton is prettier in vases than the fabric production method. Image courtesy of unsplash.

4. GMO is not “natural”

Organic was a good-hearted effort begun in the 1970s. But technology has changed so much, and organic is not the best land stewardship anymore. GMOs are not allowed in organic agriculture. Organic gives up all the gains in water savings, innate pest resistance, longer staple length to meet an ideal from 50 years ago.

Organic cotton is sprayed with Bt, which is derived from a bacteria that lives in soil. Instead of spraying the bacterium on the crop, as they do in organic agriculture, the gene is spliced into the crop. The GMO bit is adding the Bt to it. Read more here.

Yes, bollworm is just one pest and should be used in conjunction with crop rotation and other IPM, (integrated pest management techniques). With GMO Bt cotton, you really can produce cotton with less water, land and pesticides. 97% fewer pesticides is the norm in both the US and Australia.

But Grace, what about the True Cost documentary highlighting the plight of farmers in India?

Monsanto’s business practices is a different issue from Bt or GMOs in general. I will not defend Monsanto’s business practices, but I will defend science and evidence. The good news is that gene splicing does not have to be done by for-profit companies.

Brazilian scientists produced Bt cotton independently, which they will presumably allow their own farmers to use without charge. Farmers will then be able to save seeds and use it without paying patent royalties. The Gates Foundation is doing something similar but will release it to farmers all over the world.

Bt provides resistance from the most common pests. Farmers don’t want to spray pesticides. It’s bad for the land, bad for themselves, and costs money.

Notes on herbicides and GMO

Monsanto sells Bt cotton with or without Round-up (glyphosate) resistance. So Monsanto makes money selling you the seed and the Round-up. Over-use of glyphosate is creating super-weeds. It’s like over-use of antibiotics breeding super-germs. Monsanto says that they sell Bt cotton with our without the gene for glyphosate resistance. 85% with, 15% without. Farmers can buy the resistant seeds and hope that weeds are not enough of a problem in that field, in that year, that they need to use it. It’s an insurance policy.

The US cotton industry says that it’s 1% organic, 15-16% cleaner cotton, and the rest conventional. Worldwide, the cleaner cotton portion keeps growing, which I suspect is why the Australian numbers look so good compared to 30 years ago.

Spraying so much glyphosate is really bad. But, I have a friend who is a farmer, who says that one application per year, applied at just the time when weeds are taking off, makes a big difference in his yield. Super-weeds are not a problem for him because the glyphosate cuts down the weeds just enough to reduce the work required to deal with the remaining weeds using mechanical means (hoeing or pulling). Weeds compete with the crops for water, nitrogen, etc. So they really do reduce crop yield.

Weeds weeds weeds …image courtesy of Unsplash

5. Organic cotton is biodegradable, conventional cotton is not.

Any cotton, along with linen, hemp, and some rayons, is just cellulose. You can compost it. But, landfill is problematic. Landfills have been excavated and found banana peels that haven’t degraded!

Also, the dyes and finishes and synthetic thread are contaminants. Microfibers in sewage is a whole other subject. In southern California, SoCal, we recycle our water as much as possible. So our water treatment will remove suspended microfibers. In northern California, where water is more abundant, they just minimally treat the water for disinfection and dump that into the bay. They have microfibers in their bay, which eventually flush into the ocean. But, that’s a sewage treatment problem that is easily fixable. Just add money and infrastructure. SoCal had to do it because water is so scarce here. Other places can do it if they want to.

Note from Kate: blogpost here on how landfills work, and this one here on microfibres. Bear in mind there are also cotton and linen microfibres the ocean that haven’t degraded.

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OK, so that’s some pretty good myth-busting and logical arguments there… bottom line is that you need to do your own reading and form an opinion. PS. if you need an intro into organic, check out my blog post here. It’s from 2017, but still relevant.

Kate xx

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Grace Peng …scientist, mom, sewist, lifelong slayer of BS. Her background is in mathematics, chemistry and she holds a PhD in Chemical Physics from the U of Colorado at Boulder and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. Since then, she has been paid to work at the intersection of environmental science, environmental policy, data analysis, data management and software engineering. She has not been paid to be a mother, daughter, wife, and community volunteer, but she works plenty hard at those jobs, too.

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July 6, 2020 5 comments

Couture Interviews Sewing

Sewing inspiration: in conversation with Kathryn Brenne

written by Kate

What’s the difference between a home sewist and sewing professional? How do you take your sewing to the next level to turn your homemades into couture pieces? Want to know the behind the scenes of being a pattern designer for a big 4 company? All this and more in this interview with Kathryn Brenne when we met in London – teacher, writer, pattern designer for Vogue, the list goes on. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

What’s your sewing story Kathryn?

I’ve been sewing since I was 7. My high school in the 70s was very progressive and I had a very inspiring teacher. After basic sewing, I learnt knits, tailoring, daywear, upholstery, and also got industry experience. I spent time with a tailor, time in a shirt manufacturing factory, with a fashion buyer for catalogue shopping.

By the time I was 15 I knew I wanted to go into fashion, so I went to Ryersons in Toronto and majored in fashion design. Ryersons teaches you to work in industry. You sew with industrial machines and techniques like setting in jacket sleeves without pins. In my last year I specialised in tailoring for men.

Early entrepreneur days

I was raised to have the confidence to say “I can do that” and I’ve always had a business. After graduation I started making tailored menswear suiting but also womenswear and activewear. Once I made a downhill skiing racing outfit for someone who brought fabric back from Europe. Did you know – given the speeds they travel downhill, if there is a hole in the fabric they end up blowing up like a balloon! I also worked 4-8.30 Monday to Thursday in a government job in the evening so that I was able to design and sew during the day.

After I got married and moved out of Toronto to North Bay, I decided to teach sewing as well and applied to be a night school teacher. But there were no openings as Rose, who was in her 60s, taught every night of the week! They suggested I run a self-improvement class to get my foot in the teaching door, so I designed a class and young women would come to learn makeup, hair, walk, modelling, and I’d get them little gigs in fashion show. This was the in the 80s – probably call it “finishing class” now.

Teaching and writing in the 1990s

After that, I taught sewing at a college part-time and also in a quilting shop (smocking, cross stitch). In the 90s I started writing. I heard that the Threads magazine editor was coming to Toronto, so I signed up for his class so I could show him my work. That paid off, and I started working with Threads. Later on, I was scouted by Vogue for a few articles. Over time I’ve written for all the big publications – Sewing Today, Consumers Digest, Sew News. I carried on with the bespoke sewing as well, and in 2000 I decided to open a sewing school.

Life as a Vogue pattern designer

I can put anything through a sewing machine and my designs are varied – I can do funky skirts, pretty dress, pants. Part of my inspiration comes from travelling, and I also get a lot of mailings for trend and style. Once a year I present Vogue with sketch ideas (technical drawings) and they decide what they want. Everything is swatched, sometimes I do storyboards to give additional context and feeling. Occasionally they will ask me for something, e.g. accessories design. Most of the time I have way too many ideas so they keep a hold file on me.

Once they decide, I drape the garments (except pants, which are flat pattern drafted). If I’m making a new pattern, it takes me 2 weeks to make the design, the sample, figure out the sewing techniques. Then I provide a size 10 model garment for a 6” tall model. This is the height of model used in their photography. The final pattern for the consumer is 5’5”.

As it takes about one year for something to be released, it’s up to me to decipher what trends are going to last. Remember the bare shoulders trend? I didn’t think it would last, so I didn’t propose anything to do with them. Also, I have to know what the Vogue customer wants to wear. She’s older than the other brands but wants high-end styles. McCalls is the youngest, and Butterick for those your age (Kate: I’m 35).

Your best selling pattern?

V9268 has been reprinted a few times. At any given time there are 520 times in the whole Vogue collection. Every new release is in a bundle of 40 patterns, and at the same time, the bottom selling 40 are taken off sale. Mine are usually in the top 10 so they are good sellers. The colours of the envelope are important. If you have a sample in all black it won’t sell well, because you can’t see it.

Should we all learn to pattern draft?

When I first opened my sewing school, a lot of people said they wanted pattern drafting classes. But what I came to realise was that most people don’t actually want to draw their own designs – they just want clothes that fit! I’ve been sewing >50 years and fitted a ton of bodies in that time, a lot of knowing how to fix problems with fit is down to experience.

The other thing to remember is that drafting is all about mathematical calculations. Using reference points, ratios, being really accurate – you want to be good at math if you want to pattern draft.

What makes a good pattern?

A good pattern leaves minimal room for error. Pieces and notches need to match up, I like to have pattern pieces for everything (I will always have separate pieces for an upper collar and under collar) …. but if you don’t make fit adjustments then you still won’t end up with a good garment.

Slow sewing and sustainability

For the most part, when choosing fabric I like to use natural fibres, but it depends on what I’m making. One bias cut dress I have in polyester and it doesn’t wrinkle so it’s great for travelling. I will buy fabric online without seeing a swatch – if the description and photos are good then I will have a pretty good idea on how the fabric behaves.

Most of my garments take a long time to produce because I always enjoy hand sewing. There is usually a lot of basting involved, depending on how I think the fabric will react.

Silk t-shirt: 3 full working days (20+ hours)
Linen dress: one week, three days to make to do the dress, and a couple extra days to do the embroidery work (pic above)
Jacket: 2 weeks.
Tailored trousers: if the pattern is already figured out and fit sorted, then 2.5 – 3 days.

Every year I make a lot of garments, it’s my job. For workshops I teach (sometimes with Jon Moore), for Vogue patterns, for articles. But I keep my pieces for years and years and they are quite timeless. By now my wardrobe is very large and I have a very supportive husband who is happy to keep building more cupboards and a dressing room! Some people shop vintage, I just shop my wardrobe. I still have one coat from when I was at Ryerson’s in 1981. Also, I have 3 daughters so if they will have first dibs if I’m giving things away.

Finally, what do you think is important to be sustainable in our sewing?

Developing sewing skills. Especially for the younger generation like my daughters (who are approaching 30). There’s sewing things up quickly to wear tonight, but it’s good to develop skills so that you can make a coat or other quality garment that will last for many years. Things that can take your sewing to the next level:

Expand your hand stitching techniques (which you can learn at the couture workshops)
Baste things together for better accuracy.
Learn different zipper techniques.
Learn pressing techniques. Ironing and pressing are two different things – you can take a badly sewn garment and improve the look of it by 200% just by pressing it properly. It can really make a break a garment.
Experience different fabric and how it behaves.
Learn how to to build shape into a garment.

A couture finish on the undercollar – the edge is folded over for a flat finish and cross stitched down by hand.

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Thanks to Kathryn for sharing her story and providing her suggestions of sewing things to learn. I’m certainly feeling inspired to up my sewing game and I hope you are too! If you’re interested in reading more about couture, check out my interview with Jon Moore here.

Till next time

Kate x

December 29, 2019 3 comments

Interviews Opinion pieces Sustainability thoughts

An interview with Clare Press – the way forward for sustainable fashion

written by Kate

If you’re into sustainable fashion you’ll have come across Clare Press, sustainability editor at large for Vogue Australia as well as the author of the books Wardrobe Crisis and Rise & Resist. I was super excited to have met her last year in London and we had a good old chinwag about what the way forward for sustainable fashion. Read on to hear all about it!

What does good look like for you?

Good fashion to me looks like connection. Connecting with how clothes are made, with the people who made them and taking the time to do that.
Clare Press

It’s reigniting our passion for what clothes can mean and represent as well as what sort of impact they have had on the environment. I think we have reached the high point of being disconnected and consuming mindlessly, and we’re sick of that.

Is the high point real, or just because we are living in a sustainable fashion bubble?

The sustainable fashion bubble is real and it’s easy to believe things are happening if the people around you have the same types of views. But broadly speaking I think the cultural shift is happening, with people feeling like they have too much stuff, an awareness that we’re trashing the environment and generally feeling disconnected.

On the issue of trash in the environment, you can’t look away from it. Even at train stations there are posters and ads are about all about plastic. It’s just that it hasn’t happened as fast for fashion.

We all remember this kind of 2018 picture right?

What about cultural shifts?

It takes time for culture change, and whilst I feel like we should be in a hurry, we can’t expect people to change their habits overnight which have been built up over 20 years. But fast fashion is relatively new – 20 years is pretty short – and I think fast fashion in its current form is on it’s way out. If you gave anyone a chance to give careful consideration to the issues around fast fashion, they would say that designing clothes to throw away is madness. And so is spending good money on buying clothes to throw them away.

More and more info being disseminated about fast fashion in all different kinds of media. Just think about the Burberry incineration issue in the media – that was a powerful image of burning fashion! Even if we already know that most brands incinerate and landfill textiles, it was surprising to a lot of people because of the lack of transparency in fashion.

There is more focus on fashion though. In the UK there’s the parliamentary group on textiles and fashion. (FYI – a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) was formed July 2019). Also the Environmental Audit Committee report on fashion. Really – since when has fashion been discussed in parliament?

Fashion Revolution event in London, April 2019: L-R: Orsola De Castro (Creative Director, Fashion Revolution), Mary Creagh, MP, Baroness Lola Young, Hendrik Alpen, Laura Balmond, Mark Sumner

What does good look like for brands?

Brands need to think about how they are sourcing as the cost of wastefulness goes up – the price of commodities has been decreasing for the last 100 years but it’s not going to stay that way.

Forward-thinking innovative brands are starting to imagine how they can still be in business but do it differently. It would be an exaggeration to say that any of the big brands are seriously talking about addressing overconsumption. But ideas like stepping up access over ownership, using circular fibres, and the rhetoric around buy less choose well make it last … this is powerful stuff.

Also, consumers starting to ask for higher quality. All the things are in place to make fashion change but we can’t expect it to happen overnight given fashion is a huge unwieldy system.

Recommerce as an area of growth

Recommerce is expected to eclipse fast fashion within 10 years. If brands can figure out how to make the second-hand economy work for them then it’s also an area of growth. We’re only at the beginning of the model of access over ownership for example and there is so much scope!

One of the secrets to making fashion circular/sustainable is recognising that different consumers are looking for different things. It would be ludicrous to imagine that everyone ought to become an op shop rummager. It’s not what most people like and they don’t have time, confidence, or inclination to do that. But sites like Vestaire Collective and smaller startups can offer some change.

I think this is a Victorian undergarment but I wore it as a crop last summer. One of my favourites from Retold Vintage

It is common human urge to acquire stuff and keep up with the newness – we can be like bowerbirds looking for new and shiny things! This is so deeply embedded in us, so telling people to buy less doesn’t always work. Which is why I’m excited about concepts like access over ownership.

Let’s talk about regulation and taxes on fashion.

In my view we need robust legislation in the places we buy fast fashion. If we expect consumers to green fashion themselves it’s absolutely unrealistic. The Modern Slavery Act, for example, has been a good thing (even if it’s unenforceable and no penalties). Similar legislation has been introduced in Australia, but again there are no penalties. There just isn’t enough teeth in our regulation across the board.

Note: According to the 2018 Fashion Revolution consumer report, which surveyed 5000 people in the 5 biggest fashion consuming places, respondents expressed support for socially just garment production as being more important than any other topic surveyed (including environmental protection).

Fashion regulation is difficult to do though. We live in a deregulated global economy and we can’t expect only brands and consumers to lead the change. It needs to be all stakeholders including lawmakers to consider how they can do it.

One of my personal passion points is plastic. Governments need to immediately tax or ban plastic packaging and regulate to reduce it drastically. For fashion, one thing governments could do to help move fashion forward is regulating or incentivising recycled fibre and packaging content.

So what do we do now?

There needs to be a massive step up in engagement, consumers, media, and brands. All levels of society to be involved, from Instagram influencers to schoolchildren to bump up education.

The issues around fashion are so bewildering and unwieldy. There is new information and research reports every week. But sustainability is important for every single person on this planet and we need to make the message relevant and inclusive to everyone.

For the individual consumer, it’s about finding what tugs at your heartstrings that you can connect with. Is it sewing? Mending? Begin vegan? It’s really up to you.
Brands have to look at working conditions and sourcing more sustainably. It’s too easy to give up in the face of so much information.

Maybe we solve the climate question first. Maybe we throw all of our energies into that because it’s so pressing and we have such a short time to address that. If we don’t have a liveable climate then we what hope do we have for social justice?
Cameron Russell (via Clare Press), social justice and diversity campaigner

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Hope you enjoyed the whirlwind conversation with Clare. To learn more about how the wider fashion industry is grappling with sustainability, I’d recommend reading Clare’s books and listening to her podcast Wardrobe Crisis. Lots of chats with academics, industry professionals, and smaller fashion brands on sustainability! My favourites are the ones featuring people who work outside fashion – Dame Ellen MacArthur, polar explorer Tim Jarvis, scientist/conservationist Tim Flannery, and even Richard Denniss (an Australian economist discussing overconsumption and “affluenza” – I wrote about how it relates to fabric shopping here).

September 1, 2019 11 comments

Fabric info Interviews Opinion pieces Sustainability thoughts

What’s the most sustainable textile to buy?

written by Kate

The title is a rhetorical question – it is I believe a truth universally acknowledged, that there is no such thing as “most sustainable” when it comes to textiles. (Sorry, is my play on Jane Austen words just dodgy?).

Failing having an all-out winner on the most sustainable textiles, we could think about groups of textiles. There is any number of ways of classifying them. One of the most obvious would be natural fibres vs. synthetics. Personally, I’ve never been able to form a convincing argument to myself that natural fibres are definitively more sustainable (you can read the goods and bads here, and the microplastic issue which I wrote about here). This issue cropped up again for me during a Fashion Revolution event in London this year where there was a question from the audience to the panel around whether synthetics should be banned.

My ears especially pricked up when Dr Mark Sumner (fashion, retail and sustainability lecturer at the School of Design at the University of Leeds) answered with a discussion on how some Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) showed that polyester can be more “sustainable” than cotton. I caught up with him separately to chat more about this.

Dr Mark Sumner is the one on the far right

Life cycle assessment – what is it all about?

Life cycle assessment (LCA) involves the evaluation of some aspects – often the environmental aspects – of a product system through all stages of its life cycle.
Source – European Environment Agency

Seeing that an LCA does what it says on the tin, you would expect that LCAs should be a reliable point of comparison for fibre sustainability. But as usual, it’s not that simple…

Why are LCAs challenging?

Conducting LCAs requires adherence to a set of British or European standards. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t variation in the different parameters used to measure sustainability. According to Mark, you could analyse a bunch of different LCAs and come up with different conclusions depending on which studies you choose. Some of the challenges:

1. Is your data independent?

In this day and age where our lives are all about data, data, data, the story is no different for LCAs. But it is challenging to find independent data. Mark tells me there have been quite a few LCAs conducted around cotton. But whilst some data might come from academics, the stakeholders involved the LCAs might be also be engaged in the production of cotton. And therefore they may look at things with a slightly different lens.

2. Is your data granular enough?

Another challenge data granularity. Continuing with the cotton example, the water footprint of cotton produced in India maybe 3-4 times higher than the cotton from Australia. So just looking at the headline outputs of the elements of an LCA isn’t going to be enough.

3. Consumers are not all created equal

Assumptions made about consumers is one of the big variables. Most LCAs look at how much environmental impact there is per wear or wash, but how on earth do you get that accurate? What one consumer does can be the complete opposite of another. Mark has few clothes and wears them to death over a number of years. In contrast, his niece is 19 and only interested in wearing each of her garments a few times. And then there’s me (and maybe you?) somewhere in between. I don’t consider myself to have an “excessive” amount of clothing, but stuff does enter the wardrobe on a reasonably regular basis (though there is much that gets stored away and taken out again depending on the season).

New-ish to my wardrobe for this spring / summer – sewing pattern from a Japanese sewing book

Why bother with LCAs and fibre sustainability indexes then?

Philosophically speaking, LCAs and fibre sustainability are important for the fashion industry. There needs to be some kind of baseline to work with, and independent studies are probably the most truthful data that can be accessed.

But as you’ll have gathered from above, LCAs and fibre sustainability indexes (e.g. Higg) are complicated. Also, whilst transparency is important, the next question is that even if all the available data was interrogated, what do you then do with the information? How does it influence decision making?

An example of doing something with the information might be consumer transparency. We could have labels on garments to tell consumers the level of “green-ness” of a garment. But that assumes a level playing field with everyone using the same standards and symbols.

As an aside – whether consumers would understand the labelling or care about it is an entirely different matter. A blog post on that is coming your way soon!

Back to the #fashionquestiontime question – what is more sustainable, polyester or cotton?

According to Mark, if a garment is being worn until it completely wears out, then polyester is the best. It has a long life span and is more durable than cotton. But there are known issues with it being derived from non-renewable sources. And there is a disposal problem as well as a microfibre problem.

At this moment, you have to decide what’s important to you. If you’re worried about chemicals and pesticides and social impact then think about cotton. If you’re more concerned about fossil fuels, then think about polyester.

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So there you go, another person who says that trying to be “sustainable” really depends on interpretation and what matters to the individual. As ever, there’s no right answer – except using less and consuming less!

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August 17, 2019 5 comments

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