Circular Economy & The Fashion Industry

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), this USD 2.5 trillion clothing industry annually hires over 300 million people along the value chain; cotton production alone accounts for almost 7% of all employment in certain low-income countries. Textiles and clothing are a fundamental part of our everyday life and a crucial sector in the global economy that has drifted far beyond just meeting basic human needs but also negatively impacting our planet. This system uses non-renewable resources extracted from the ground to make garments beyond what is required, often used for a short period, after which consumers dispose of what they no longer need, which is discarded in landfills and incinerators. The prevailing system for producing, distributing, and how clothing is used operates almost linearly.

Issues. The fashion supply chain is one of the most globalized, intricated, and prolonged of any manufactured product, and by relying primarily on non-renewable resources – 98 million tonnes in total per year, including oil are required to produce synthetic fibres (acrylic & nylon), fertilizers, and pesticides to grow cotton, and chemicals to make, dye, and finish fibres and textiles. It is second to the oil industry in terms of environmental impact. It also carries an immense footprint by being one of the significant contributors to more than half of a million tons of microplastic entering rivers and oceans. EMF (2017) estimates that the volume of plastic microfibers in the ocean could rise to more than 22 million tons between 2015 and 2050. The paucity of standards and regulations results in the inability of either governments or retailers to carry out any substantive enforcement on manufacturers.

The resulting sustainability issues of this multi-billion-dollar industry relate to severe consequences for society and the environment caused by water and food crises due to high water usage, ecosystem pollution, including eutrophication (responsible for 20% of global water pollution), and the dispersal of hazardous chemicals (about 3,500 substances used in textiles of which 750 are classified as hazardous to humans and 440 to the environment), landfills, air pollution, and energy. All these are exacerbated by the problem of climate change, with massive effects on water resources and agriculture, among others. Moreover, fibre cultivation for textiles competes with food production for arable land and leads to food scarcity, malnutrition, and substantial deforestation. It has been calculated that in India, for example, 9 per cent of national malnutrition is attributable to cotton cultivation, which occupies 8 per cent of the country’s arable land (Ridoutt et al., 2019).

The fashion industry steers in a linear way, in a “cradle to grave” model whereby an expendable tradition spurs consumers to treat low-priced fast fashion items as throwaways. For instance, Australians are the second largest consumer per capita of textiles globally, consuming twice the global average (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). Consequently, clothing is massively under-utilized, its use is reduced by 40%, and an estimated USD 500 Billion annually is lost due to barely worn clothing. Furthermore, European consumers discard about 5.8 million tonnes of textiles each year, which equates to an average of 11kg of textiles per person, with having worn garments only 7 or 8 times. There has been a surge in apparel sales over the last two decades, with a 40% rise in garments purchased per person. Each person spends around USD 1,050 annually on textile products, representing 5.3% of their total expenditure on textile. However, it is stipulated that globally, the consumption of clothing and footwear is expected to increase by 63% by 2030, ranging from 62 million tonnes to 102 million tonnes in 2030 (Textile & Environment in a circular economy report, 2020).

Over a decade, production has nearly doubled, propelled by a growing working-class population across the globe. This is mainly due to the ‘fast fashion’ phenomenon, with the quicker turnaround of new styles, increased number of seasonal collections, ease of purchase, and payment through a straightforward click, compounded by lower prices. As such, fast fashion encourages overconsumption and enhances waste generation, as this drives the promotion of new items and the disposal of old ones, which are branded as obsolete simply because they are out of fashion. Accordingly, some online brands mainly targeting young people release between 12, 16, and 24 new clothing collections annually. Consequently, the increase in online sales significantly impacts resource use and emissions regarding packaging and transport.

Consequently, if the fashion industry maintains this course, it could absorb more than the 26% of the Carbon budget correlated with a 2 degrees centigrade global warning limit. In 2015, greenhouse gas emissions from textile production amounted to 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2‐eq, more than international flights and shipping combined (EMF, 2017). Hence, shifting to a circular economy principle could help achieve the 2 degrees centigrade average global warning limit (EMF, 2017; Measuring Fashion, 2018).

Vision. The encompassing vision of a new textiles’ economy is to correspond with the values of a circular economy whose concept is derived from a production and consumption dyad system with minimal losses of materials and energy through one that is restorative and regenerative by design and concept, and which provides benefits for businesses, society, and the environment. This overall concept consists of three design principles: a design for durability, a design for long-lasting style, and a design for disassembly (Circular Fashion, 2019). In this new vision, clothes are retained at their highest values during usage and re-enter the economy after use by never ending up as waste. To avoid 15 million tons of clothes being sent to landfills, effective and appropriate solutions based on Systems Thinking should be seriously envisaged. If implemented, that might provide a driving force from a linear economy to a circular one, as otherwise, it would lead to a dystopian future. Therefore, Systems Thinking can provide a driving force for a quantum leap from a linear economy to a circular one and how appropriate knowledge and enabling infrastructure may assist in enhancing circularity. Below are some focus areas where such a vision can be realized.

Focus Areas:

1. New business models such as rental, repairs, and sharing can give customers more flexibility on their desired clothes. Likewise, personalized designs have enhanced consumers’ emotional attachment to clothes, stimulating users to maintain and repair rather than discard. Longer active use of garments reduces the need for new ones and avoids waste generation. A study performed by the EMF pointed out that if the number of times a garment is worn was doubled, and garment purchases and production were reduced by half as a consequence, the greenhouse gas emissions of the textile industry would be reduced by 44 per cent (EMF, 2017).

2. How to make durability more attractive?

Clothes are designed and produced at high quality using better yarns and ecological finishing processes. The choice of materials is essential to ensure sustainability and durability. Different fibres made from other resources will have different environmental and climate impacts. The aim is to increase the lifespan of garments through durable fasteners, availability of spare parts, colourfastness, and fabric resilience.

3. How to make resale attractive to a broader range of customers?

Designing clothes to last and transform used clothes by using digital technology to upgrade garments (by laser input) and to resell to a new owner (digital sales platform). It is expected that the secondhand market will rise to over $50 billion by 2023, currently worth $24 billion (EMF, 2021)

4. How may retailers work with manufacturers to design out waste and pollution?

Designing fabrics by eliminating toxic dyes and garments using nickel-free metalware. Designers accept a wider shade tolerance and adjust washing standards according to shade levels. This would ensure millions of fabrics were taken and, worse, redyed. Designers should use near-matching factory-available stock threads rather than be persistent on what the design boards stipulate, especially in Denim, where the wash will inherently fade the indigo away. This could help alleviate massive thread stock levels and unnecessary thread production, where excessive dyes, water, and transportation are involved.

5. How can fashion regenerate natural systems by not wasting water?

Denim fabric production is a highly complex process involving many interaction steps before reaching the full garment status. Thus, the fabric dyeing process involves excessive water, chemical consumption, and disproportionate water levels to remove the same indigo at a garment finishing/laundry stage (Fabric finishing 70L/Meter, Utilities 20L/Meter, Garment finishing 75L/Meter). The Ozone technology (G2 Dynamic from Jeanologia, Spain) is a significant positive disruptor to the Denim fabric process. Using Ozone created from the air in the atmosphere, G2 Dynamic reduces 95% of conventional water consumption without using thermal energy and no chemicals. In addition, Jeans could also be finished with the same Ozone technology where less water (the traditional process of 90L/Jeans reduced to 15 L) and no chemicals are required in the laundry. With such a qualitative technological leap, Jeanologia estimates that it could save an average of 8.8 million m3 of water annually, sufficient to supply the entire population of Uruguay. Such technological innovation will generate less waste and fewer emissions while phasing out hazardous chemicals, not to mention increasing the availability of the precious liquid for portable purposes.

6. Educating the consumers.

An EIM (Environmental Impact Measuring, developed by Jeanologia) could be labelled on each garment, or a quick response (QR) code can also provide transparent information on water use, limited use of hazardous substances, reduced emissions to water and air during production, prolonging the product lifetimes, take-back systems, re‐design, and fibre composition. Such information could be helpful for the consumer to be consciously aware of the total environmental impact of the garment before making a buying decision.

Overall. As exigencies grow, the prevalent textile and fashion course is set to have calamitous ramifications for us and beyond. It is a prodigal system that poses pressure on resources, contaminates, and eventually degrades the natural environment by generating significant and growing negative societal burdens. A shift to a circular system entails a thorough systemic change throughout the value chain supported by adequate policies from governments, brands, retailers, manufacturers, and consumers rather than small-scale initiatives and isolated success stories. The transition to a circular textile system could be escalated by deploying technological and business model innovation policies, such as R&D subsidies and investment support for SMEs. Therefore, it is mandatory to change behavioural attitudes through sustainability awareness via education and training of consumers and producers, notably towards durability, reuse, repair, and recycling. Finally, at the global level, such a circular and sustainable system would contribute towards achieving quite a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, and Goal 13: Climate Action, among others.