The darned circulatory problem with textiles
October 29, 2021, 7:37 a.m.
Geneva (dpa) New fashions from old clothes – that sounds tempting, because the textile industry pollutes the environment and the climate. But to do that is more difficult than expected.
Constantly new collections in the shops, cheap fashion for the price of a coffee that encourages buying, wearing and throwing away.
However, the environmental and climate impact of the textile industry is enormous, something must also change. More and more fashion companies are advertising sustainable materials, but there is still no real cycle in which old clothes become new textiles.
The textile industry is one of the world’s largest branches of industry. The United Nations estimate their size at 2.4 billion dollars a year (around two billion euros), with more than 75 million employees worldwide. “The fashion industry consumes water in the world and is responsible for eight to ten percent of carbon emissions – more than all international flights and shipping combined,” said the United Nations at the start of a UN project for sustainable fashion in 2019.
An estimated 50 billion tons of textiles are produced every year. Three quarters of this is likely to end up in landfills. With fast fashion, i.e. many collections and low prices, production doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the McKinsey management consultancy, and wearing time halved. Another study shows: Statistically, every German throws away around 4.7 kilograms of textiles each year. Only 500 grams of it would be recycled.
The consortium wear2wear with six companies in the textile industry aims to manufacture textiles from 100 percent used textiles. This includes the company Sympatex from Unterföhring in Upper Bavaria, which produces a waterproof, windproof and breathable membrane for functional textiles. By 2030, she only wants to use raw materials from a circular textile cycle, and everything should be 100-potentially recyclable again, as spokeswoman Verena Bierling says.
However, a test by wear2wear companies with a rain jacket showed that the devil is in the details. With 500 kilograms of old polyester jackets, 230 meters of fabric could be woven, but 70 percent new fibers are usually added for quality reasons, as wear2wear spokeswoman Annette Mark says. The new fibers come from PET bottles, including plastic. But environmentalists find it problematic when material is withdrawn from a functioning cycle such as plastic bottles.
The Swiss Materials Testing and Research Institute (Empa) has the environmental impact of the jacket with the proportion of old jackets with a jacket made entirely of PET bottle fibers. The old clothes jacket did better in eleven environmental risk categories, such as geothermal warming, poisonous pollution for ecosystems and water scarcity. But: “The energy expenditure for cleaning, decolorizing and the like remains enormous,” says Mark. Work will continue on the processes. “You shouldn’t lie in your pocket: we’re still at the very beginning.”
And polyester is still simple. It gets a lot more complicated with blended fabrics. But this is what the majority of clothing worldwide consists of. Processes to easily break down fabrics into components such as polyester, polyamide and cotton are in their infancy. In the case of the rain jackets that were recycled, only five percent were not made of polyester, for example the adhesive between the membrane and lining, but even after the granules had melted during further processing, the nozzles of the spinning machines were already made. In addition, the cycle is not endless: “We can manage a recycle cycle, but after that it becomes difficult with the quality,” says Mark. The polymer loses quality and the new yarn becomes uneven.
The British company Worn Again Technologies is working on the separation of blended fabrics. Investors include the fashion company H&M and the Swiss technology company Sulzer. Sulzer is building a plant that converts polyester and cotton garments into polyester pellets and cellulose pulp, which can be spun back into fibers. The plant should produce 1000 tons of new fibers per year. But that would be a drop in the ocean compared to the quantities H&M sells.
According to a company spokesman, the proportion of recycled materials at H&M in 2020 was around six percent, at least twice as much as in the previous year. By 2025 it should be 30 percent. Among other things, the company founded the Itsapark online shop, which also sells second-hand clothing. The spokesman does not say how much that makes up for total sales.
Greenpeace considers such activities to be window dressing. It gives customers a clear conscience so that they can continue shopping carefree, says Greenpeace consumer expert Viola Wohlgemuth. Textile consumption has to change fundamentally. The companies would have to become textile service providers. “Borrowing, sharing, swapping, solving – that has to be the model of the future, and clothing made from sustainable models has to be found everywhere in everyday life and cheaper than buying something new,” she says. H&M is also keen to ensure that fashion is used, resold, reused and recycled for as long as possible, the spokesman asserts.
The European Union will publish a textile strategy this year. Manufacturers should be held accountable so that they produce more durable textiles, die less damage to the environment and can recycle better.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211029-99-780755 / 4