The fashion industry needs to reinvent itself if it is to become sustainable. Recycling is one solution. But recycling implies a new distribution of value, technological developments and innovative methods. Brussels-based scale-up Resortecs is at the forefront...
For several months now, voices denouncing the social and ecological ravages of fast fashion have been increasingly vocal. And the arguments are well-founded.
Two years ago, the French Ministry of Ecological Transition quoted Le Monde as pointing out that the fashion industry ‘now emits more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime traffic combined’, or more than 10% of global emissions.
Regularly criticised for its environmental and social practices, global clothing production has doubled over the last 15 years. At the same time, the number of times we wear our blouses, trousers, skirts and jackets has fallen by an average of 36%, according to figures quoted by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Circle Economy Foundation. This is largely due to ultra-fast fashion, the symbol of the headlong rush towards a model that is anything but sustainable.
Disposable clothes
Clothes are increasingly seen as disposable objects. But where do our clothes end up when they're not directly thrown away? There are, of course, second-hand websites such as Vinted, and town-centre second-hand shops, which offer interesting outlets for the overloaded wardrobes of fashion victims.
For the rest, Refashion, an eco-organisation in the textile sector, estimates that around a third of the textiles discarded by consumers are dropped off at collection points or picked up by associations. They are then sorted in specialised centres. The most damaged end up being incinerated or recycled as rags or insulation. The most valuable items are resold in community shops.
Overflowing landfills
But even if demand for second-hand clothing is increasing, it is still too low to keep up with the exponential growth in the number of garments collected. So everything else is exported, particularly to Africa, to be resold to local intermediaries and start a new life. According to the World Trade Organisation, 5.3 million tonnes of used textiles and shoes are exported around the world every year, mainly from the European Union (EU) and the United States, but also from China and Pakistan.
As a result, several countries are now being swamped by a massive influx of used textiles of mediocre quality that are completely unsaleable, even at the lowest prices. In Ghana alone, containers transport 15 million items every week, supposedly to supply a sector comprising no fewer than 30,000 tailors and traders. But according to estimates by The Or Foundation, a specialist NGO, 40% of these items are unusable. Just imagine jumpers with holes or stretches, or shapeless T-shirts that have completely faded...
So rather than being worn again elsewhere, tonnes of textiles end up on African coasts and in overflowing landfills, where they sometimes end up in flames - incinerated accidentally over there, rather than industrially here...
Disassembling to recycle
Faced with a system that is reaching its limits, and beyond the necessary questioning of hyper-consumerism in clothing, there is a lack of industrial recycling solutions on a European or global scale.
In order to be recycled, 78% of garments must first be disassembled to separate the different materials and fabrics they contain - elastics, linings, etc. - as well as zips, labels, buttons and other accessories.
It's a huge challenge that Resortecs has been tackling for several years now. Founded in 2017, it has developed an exclusive sewing thread whose great quality is that it ‘melts’ at a certain temperature. Once extracted from an industrial disassembly system, also specifically developed by the Brussels-based start-up to preserve the quality of the fabrics, the various components can easily be separated and then recycled.
Collections and industrial production
With its ‘design for disassembly’ process now completely perfected, Resortecs has won over a number of major brands, including Decathlon and Bershka, with whom it has worked closely to develop collections of items that can easily be disassembled. ‘We're having one success story after another, and more and more brands are taking an interest,’ says Rawaa Ammar, Chief Sustainability and Impact Officer.
Today, Resortecs' yarn is already used in products marketed in over 60 countries. The next stage of development has already begun, with the recent launch of large-scale production of industrial collections, and the ambition to become a key reference in the sector by 2030.
Ecosystem
To achieve this, it won't be sufficient to convince the major brands to adopt its solution in the manufacture of their products. Resortecs is also working to set up a collection and recycling ecosystem that will enable the flow of materials from disassembled garments to be circularised downstream. Throughout Europe and the rest of the world, this effort will involve creating or strengthening various bodies to promote, coordinate and finance the collection chain - the ‘Fost Plus’ of clothing.
Brands have every interest in going down this route and keeping a close eye on eco-design solutions like the one offered by Resortecs. The regulatory framework is forcing them to do so more and more. ‘There are now more than 16 regulations governing the textile industry and its environmental practices,’ says Rawaa Ammar.
Among them is the important ESPR (Eco-design for Sustainable Product Regulation), a regulation on which the European Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement last December. Among other things, it stipulates that the destruction of unsold products should be banned from 2025.
Recycled and high value
Eventually, European regulations will also require manufacturers to include a minimum percentage of recycled materials in their products. Today, some companies are already trying, using polyester from plastic bottles, for example. But as producers of beverages, cosmetics and other packaged products are also subject to circularity obligations, their appetite for these recycled materials will also increase. The clothing industry will no longer be able to rely solely on the resources generated by its own sector to ensure a sufficient content of reused materials in its production.
All of which means that textiles at the end of their life cycle can be given a whole new lease of life. ‘The challenge for manufacturers today is to regain control of the value chain. Some of them are now testing the deployment of their own collection systems’, explains Rawaa Ammar.
50% less CO2
Brands' interest in textile-to-textile recycling will increase as they commit to reducing their carbon footprint. To do this, they now need to look not only at the emissions generated by their activities, but also those linked to the entire life cycle of their products and their value chain, including their raw materials. ‘This represents 60-70% of their footprint. Our studies show that a garment made from recycled materials using our technology can reduce its footprint by 50%. A pair of recycled jeans also saves 3,500 litres of water’, stresses the CEO.
Another major issue is the involvement of collection associations and the preservation of their economic model. The issue is all the more pressing because, by 2025, all discarded European textiles will have to be collected separately, just like paper in yellow bags and PET in blue bags. As a result, collection and sorting organisations run the same risk as African markets of being swamped with clothes that they won't be able to sell. ‘The only alternative is incineration, with all the financial and environmental costs that that entails. Our technology, on the other hand, will allow them to make the most of these stocks through recycling', pleads Rawaa Ammar.
Clearly, there is still a great deal of work to be done in organising the clothing sector in order to make it truly circular. Players like Resortecs are working on this. Ecological, social, economic, development: the stakes are high and, like the textile value chains, global.
In figures
€6.3 billion
The circular fashion market will be worth €6.3 billion in 2023, with estimated annual growth of 12% until 2030 (FMC x Accenture study).