Photo by Erfan Aghashahi

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If you already know Fabric of Change or are interested in sustainable fashion, you might have picked up that synthetic fibres are at the heart of the problem when talking about the rise of fast fashion and the exponential environmental and human impact of the industry. If not, you can read our dedicated article first here.

Given their impact, recycling these clothes to reduce their impact on the environment at the end of their life while reducing the demand on fossil fuel by creating circularity sounds like a good idea, right? You may have even already encountered those “100% recycled fibres” tags while shopping in the “ethical” or “conscious” collection of a mainstream brand. But are they truly more sustainable? How are they made? What should we make of them?

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The driving forces behind this shift

To the risk of disappointing you, it’s clear that brands did not wake up one day and decided that they should stop consuming as much oil as Spain to make the billions of clothes they produce each year. No, the increase in recycled fibres is driven by two factors, external to the industry:

1. Regulations/policy

Until recently, the fashion industry remained one of the least regulated, despite its emissions and impacts rivalling those of international transport, agriculture or construction. Yet, with the introduction new policies focusing on Circular Economy principles - aiming at reducing resource usage, extend the lifespan of our products and improve waste management - new rules are coming for them. According to the EU, circular economy is a “model of production and consumption which involves sharing, leasing, reuseing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible”. The underlying idea here is to reduce the need for virgin materials, all the while needing less products altogether, since the “life cycle of products is extended”.  

To do so, regulations are put on the design stage of products, to ensure their longetivity, repairability and recyclability. One way of doing so is to impose minimum amounts of recycled content in a product. This makes sense when we know that there is currently enough clothes in circulation to dress the next 6 generations. It does not make any sense to continue increase our production, extracting more virgin material when so much already exists.  

2. Consumers

Believe it or not, people want more eco-friendly options when shopping (especially younger generations). Brands are expected to demonstrate greater environmental and social responsibility in the products they offer. A McKinsey report even suggests that consumers are willing to pay more for such products: “Products making ESG-related claims averaged 28 percent cumulative growth over the past five-year period, versus 20 percent for products that made no such claims”.

Sparking a reaction

This growing demand, coupled with reinforced regulations have not gone unnoticed by brands and the fashion industry at large. That is why we start to see the terms recycled fibres/materials pretty much everywhere. However, when you consider that the fibre-to-fibre recycling capacity remains close to zero in the fashion industry—that is, only 1% of clothing is actually recycled into new clothing—the numbers don't quite add up. So, where are these recycled fibres coming from if not from old clothes?

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The fashion industry’s “solution”.

Closed-loop recycling (or fibre-to-fibre), involves converting textile fibres into new textiles, but remains minimal in the fashion industry. Instead, stakeholders have turned to open-loop recycling (or downcycling), using materials from entirely different product categories to manufacture their recycled fibres. Currently, most recycled fibres on the market originate from the recycling of PET bottles (for polyester) or other plastic sources, such as fishing nets.

Well? Where’s the harm in that? If the technology’s not there yet, at least they’re taking polluting products and making new stuff out of it?

Although, the development of these very technologies is driven by the brands, and where they invest their millions of dollars for R&D. An in-depth study from the Changing Market Foundation about the use of synthetic fibres by brands and their intent regarding the issue, showed that most brands surveyed (85%) were seeing recycled polyester from PET bottles as the way to answer circularity standards and “embrace more sustainable synthetics”.

If 83% of brands have goals to increase the use of recycled synthetic content, only 43% are actually investing in fibre-to-fibre recycling.

This clear choice made by multi-billionair companies follows the very common delay-distract-derail tactics. Bottles being recycled into clothing is clearly a distract strategy, using a less efficient and less costly way of reaching targets set with the aim of enhancing circularity.

Why is this a false solution?

If the messaging around these recycled fibres is well-honed, with a discourse focusing on using "materials with a story”, saving the oceans by taking pollutants out of the water, there are a couple of issues here.

The most obvious one is that all these industries using plastic bottles for other purposes are grabbing the easiest materials without trying to make their own products more recyclable, nor investing in proper textile recycling technologies. Additionally, it is counter productive to the reduction targets for plastic packaging and specifically plastic bottles. On the contrary, they are giving reasons to the plastic industry to produce more, since there is a demand for it.  

Finally, a plastic bottle kept as a bottle can be recycled multiple times and truly serves the circular economy. However, taking a plastic bottle to make textiles is silply adding one step in its lifecycle. Yet, this new piece of clothing won't have any more chances at being recycled than its virgin polyester counterparts. Therefore, this is taking away from the circularity of the plastic industry, without creating any in the textile industry.

Above all, this "solution" completely ignores the main factor in the textile waste crisis: which is the overproduction of cheaply made clothing.

What’s an actual solution?

The reality that brands are trying to hide here is that we are facing an increasing textile waste problem, rooted in their growing dependence on synthetic fibres.

The same study by Changing Markets tells us that: “no company made a clear commitment to phase out the use of synthetic fibres from their collections”, and only 6 indicated they wanted to reduce synthetics use to some extent. In other words, brands know that their business model and the very material they rely on can’t be made sustainable or circular for that matter, but don’t intend on reducing the use of this problematic materials. Bear witness is the amount of synthetic fibres used in the “sustainable” or “conscious” collection surveyed by the Synthetic anonymous report.

The realistic and rather simple solution here would be to reduce the amount of synthetic fibres that are used by the fashion industry. Although, we can’t simply substitute it by another type of fibre. The overall problem is the overproduction and consumption: we must act on volumes and recognise that the best thing that could happen to fashion is a radical slowdown, paired with a reevaluation of the value we give the clothes we wear and therefore the labour and resources put into it.

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