Category: Recycling

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Why textile recycling is not the answer to reducing the climate impact of fashion

The fashion industry has a big climate impact. As a potential way to reduce fashion’s carbon footprint, there are a lot of ongoing initiatives aiming to recycle textile fibers. However, if you study the fashion brands’ carbon accounting closely, you see that virgin textile fibers, which recycling aims to replace, only account for around 10% of the total carbon footprint. This means that virgin fibers have a minor climate impact. Instead, the main impact is fossil fuels used in the textile factories that produce our clothes. You can argue that it is important to address the total carbon footprint, including virgin fibers, and I would agree. However, since textile recycling also has a carbon footprint of its own, the gain from recycling fibers is even less than the 10%. Indeed, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency found that for example chemical recycling of cotton has a worse carbon footprint than incineration of used cotton fibers. I raised this issue in an article in the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on the topic of textile recycling and the fashion industry’s climate impact earlier this year.

Needless to say, there may be other environmental gains by recycling textile fibers. By recycling fibers the land used to grow textiles can be used to grow for example food. The water use and biodiversity issue of pesticide use when growing cotton can also be an argument for recycling the fibers. But biodiversity and pesticides can also be an argument to switch to organic practices or, as will discuss here, regenerative agriculture.

An issue that is often overlooked in the fashion and climate debate is that growing fibers such as cotton can be done in a way to sequester carbon dioxide from the air in the soil and fibers. Many of you have probably heard the term regenerative agriculture. It’s a way to use agricultural practices to reverse climate change, or in less bombastic terms, sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. An early example of this, which made me aware of the issue, was the collaboration between American non-profit Fibershed and company The North Face in producing a climate beneficial wool hat. They argue that producing the wool hat had a net positive impact on the climate, i.e. it sequestered more climate gases from the atmosphere than it released. In this case, it was sheep that sequestered more carbon dioxide than they released and in the meantime produced wool for clothing. The North Face has since expanded their climate positive range but seems to be sticking to wool.

In Sweden, a group of fashion companies are looking to use Swedish wool for clothing. Although this wool might not have been farmed using regenerative agricultural practices, it is most likely still a gain for the climate as most Swedish wool is otherwise burned, releasing carbon dioxide. Moreover, many technical garments are nowadays made out of plastic fibers, from fossil fuels, and if existing wool can replace these fibers, it’s a gain for the environment.

However, it is not only wool that can sequester carbon dioxide. Fibershed and farmer Sally Fox shows that also textile fibers such as cotton, hemp and linen have this potential. Lately, luxury fashion has learned about regenerative agriculture and even started sourcing regenerative rubber. In my opinion, such regenerative agriculture appears more promising than recycling cotton, as recycling has a carbon footprint of its own and results in lower quality fibers. Of course, we can question the greenhouse gas calculations. There is indeed an ongoing debate as to when and how you can use the term climate positive but certifications are being developed. Fibershed is working with researchers to develop their calculations. Moreover, regenerative agricultural practices as a means to slow climate change has generated research interest more generally .

Regenerative or climate positive fibers are likely to be more expensive than current conventional fibers. Considering current overconsumption of textiles, buying less and of better quality, keeping the items for longer should be possible for many of us. It may not be everyones’ cup of tea, but at least the more wealthy part of the world could afford to buy less and, when we do buy clothing, go for climate positive fibers. In addition, we need to keep our clothing longer as the easiest way to reduce fashion’s carbon footprint is to buy less and reuse our items more.

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Steering businesses towards a circular economy

As I have previously blogged about, the students in my master course ‘measuring sustainability’ at NHH have analysed and proposed indicators that H&M and other fashion companies can use to steer their business towards a circular economy. We are very thankful to H&M and sustainability manager Luisa Book for collaborating with us on this case. The topic is very much of the moment as an increasing number of companies, just like H&M, aim to become circular but then also need appropriate tools to help steer their operations in this direction.

Some of the indicators the students proposed, such as amount of recycled material out of total use of materials, are maybe not new but are crucial when a circular business is the target. Moreover, the number of times a material can be recycled needs to be monitored in order to make sure that recycling is not just a prolonging of a linear path (see Circular Flanders great illustration of this to the left). In an ideal world, materials can be recycled indefinitely.

The students also argued that it is key to keep track of collecting initiatives i.e. when brands collect used or discarded products. How much of what is sold returns to the company for recycling? Moreover, companies need to monitor what happens with collected garments- are they recycled into new garments or in fact only downcycled (used for other less valuable products)?

One reason materials cannot be recycled is because the materials are contaminated for example by chemicals that hinder recycling. The students here proposed to measure the use of such chemicals or substances. By monitoring, the company can also try to minimize such use. To know if the product is made with substances that might hinder recycling, you need proper information about what the garment is made of and how it is made. Here the students proposed that H&M could develop more elaborate tags with information about the item which could help the customer to take care of it and, eventually, facilitate the recycling of the garment.

Another point that is crucial to circular operations is to keep the materials in the processes. In the textile industry, a lot of fabric gets wasted and does not end up in any garment. Consequently, some students suggested to measure the amount of material that ends up in a garments in relation to total amount of materials used. Ideally, all materials used should end up in a garment. Similarly, the students also identified microplastics as a threat because it means that small amounts of plastic fibers continuously leave the circular flow and non-renewable materials are subsequently lost.

Another aspect commonly discussed in the context of circular economy is the slowing of the circle i.e. the prolonging of a product’s life span. Here the students reintroduced the idea of enabling users to repair their clothes, for example by making sure all items come with threads or buttons necessary for repair or providing repair services in stores. The company can track both the use of repair services and number of items that customers could repair themselves.

I hope that H&M and other companies will find the students work helpful. How to measure a circular business is really at the forefront of both practice and research. In fact, two research colleagues and I just last week got financing for a project on circular business practices by Vinnova. That the students managed this task so well and were able to develop these very helpful indicators show, to my mind, that we at University teach students useful and up to date skills. We educate students that can in fact contribute to and improve current business practices.

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The link between circular economy & sustainability- a case with H&M

This morning, I introduced the case we will be working on this autumn on my course at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH): managing business towards a circular economy and sustainability. The case is in partnership with H&M who is also a partner of the Ellen MacArthur circular economy initiative.

As I’ve written about before, I was not an early adopter of the circular economy. I do, however, teach circular economy as a trend in the sustainability area both at Örebro University and NHH. The more I reflect on the concept, the more of a convert I’ve become. So I thought I’d share some of my aha-moments about the circular economy and sustainability with you here.

First of all, what do we mean with sustainability? The established definition is from the UN Brundtland report (1987):

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

As Kuhlman & Farrington (2010) (one of our key references in the NHH course) writes, this sustainability definition addresses the tension between mankind’s aspiration towards a better life on the one hand and the limitations imposed by nature on the other hand. This tension between social welfare and natural resources is more often than not ignored in the business debate on sustainability. We often pretend it does not exist. And of course, there are many win-win situations where environmental or social measures also bring down costs and/or increase income.  There are definitely low hanging fruit, efforts that are win-win or at least come at no cost.

However, there are cases where tension between social well-fare and environmental sustainability undoubtedly exists. The pharmaceutical industry is a prime example. The industry argues that it provides tremendous social benefit by saving lives (or at least reducing suffering) but the environmental pollution, especially chemical and water pollution, is high, both at production  and consumption sites. Why do such tensions between social well-fare and natural resources occur?

Operating in a closed system

Some of you might have heard about the Planetary Boundaries. Professor Johan Rockström and co-authors defined nine environmental boundaries we should stay within to ensure a stable living environment (see picture, borrowed from the 2015 article). What this figure tells businesses is that we are operating in a closed system. If we mismanage certain environmental resources, such as biodiversity and chemical pollution, we cannot compensate for these in other ways. If we cross these, there is no functional living environment we can operate within.

 

Why a linear business model does not work in a closed system

Now the problem with a linear business model (which most businesses have and what we often teach students) is that it treats input to businesses (and its outputs) according to the value chain- the business uses certain input and through a number of processes produces some outputs. These inputs, resources, the business uses appear to just exist. The environment is there for us to use and not affected by our use. Likewise, outputs and externalities from our production  just go somewhere. However, as the 1990 chapter on circular economy by Pearce and Turner states, eventually the waste we produce will affect the availability of new resources. And the accumulated waste affects our well-being too. The fact that business operates in a closed system has to be taken into account. Certainly for global businesses.

Now from the planetary boundaries perspective, the best would of course be to minimize consumption and for us to produce less in order to spare the environment and stay within the boundaries. This is in line with the minimalism and anti-consumerism movement. If we consume less, we do not need to produce so much. We can share, mend and repurpose etc. This is admirable and has a place, especially in societies with overconsumption. It is my approach to my own wardrobe situation. However, at this point in the debate, someone will throw in the argument that we cannot deny developing countries the same social benefits we have allowed ourselves. If we have been flying for decades, why shouldn’t they be able to?

Kate Raworth, with a background at Oxfam, illustrated this pedagogically in her ‘Doughnut Economics‘. It is a fact that there are large groups of people that are not getting their basic needs met. And to achieve progress on this point will in many cases require use of natural resources. Here, the tension between the social development and the availability of natural resources the Brundtland report sought to address is very clear.

Consequently, Raworth put those basic social needs into Rockström’s figure, in the middle, to illustrate that we want to maximize the social well-fare of people while at the same time staying within the planetary boundaries. We want to operate, she argues, within the green ‘doughnut’ formation in the figure.

Sustainability is getting the maximum social value while staying within the planetary boundaries

Working along the lines of minimizing and restricting consumption can, at least in some cases, thus deny us social value. Similarly, what many sustainability-minded businesses do is to try to minimize the waste and externalities from production. To reduce the ‘shadow’ of business, make them ‘tread lightly’ on the environment. There are many impressive initiatives with zero waste factories and water reduction regimes. These are all good, no doubt about it. We need these kinds of initiatives. However, the circular economy further adds that ‘waste’ should not simply be removed but could also become a resource for us to use. It’s a fact that we need some amount of production and that it uses resources and that there will be some amount of waste. What can we do with the remaining waste? How can we turn it into resources?

As this post is long enough, I will simply have to write about the challenges with making waste into circular resources in a follow up post. Still, I hope you see, like I do, why there is a case for circular business in a sustainable society. And I’m so excited about our case with H&M and what the students will come up with.

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Sweden to become a ‘circular economy’

The Swedish government is investigating how it can promote a ‘circular economy’.  Now, what is a circular economy? While it is not so well defined, I’d say it’s an ambition to keep materials in a loop. Nature tends to work with cycles (the carbon cycle for example). Businesses, the circular economy proponents say, should mimic such systems. In a circular economy,  waste should become input to new production. In addition, there’s the idea that sharing and renting is better than owning things (I’d like to see some evidence for this).

The Swedish government’s investigation into the circular economy resulted in a 400 pages report, released last week. The report suggests tax deductions for rental, second hand and repair services, which sounds like more of what the Swedish government has already done. Other suggestions are for example to increase access to carpools and to facilitate prevention of waste (the latter is always a good idea).

When I encountered the ‘circular economy’ concept, I was initially a sceptic. It might be an academic instinct to question terms the industry has invented. ‘Isn’t this just a new fancy concept for recycling?’. Lately, however, I have slightly changed my mind. The more I learn about the waste issue the more it seems necessary that companies ‘design out waste’ (as the circular economy proponents put it). We need to have a plan for what happens to the materials and products when they are discarded. We need to make sure that our products are safely recyclable and can potentially be recycled more than once. If the circular economy concept is helpful for businesses (or states!) in order to work on these issues, then that’s more important than the lack of definition.

I also find the circular economy system diagram useful. The ways in which materials circulate are put into a hierarchy where maintaining products (such as mending) is more desirable than recycling. This seems very reasonable.

Now my research area is really the measurement of such initiatives. And, as it happens regularly, I got a really good question from a student some week ago: “How can we measure whether a business is circular?”  While businesses are quite different from nation states, the Swedish government’s report has in fact suggested some indicators for whether a country is ‘circular’. The proposed indicators measure the amount of recycled materials, the use of raw materials and the amount of waste produced. These are standard indicators that companies disclose in their sustainability reports. In a business setting, such indicators are nothing new. However, they might be more difficult to calculate on a national level. The government report suggests no indicators for the sharing, renting or repairing ideas of the circular economy.

Clearly, this is an area that needs some more work. Now if the Swedish government would want some help with measuring their circular economy ambitions, I am here to help 😉

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Is more recycling the answer?

We’ve learned that recycling is desirable. It’s the way to a more sustainable society. And in some ways it is. Compared to accumulating trash in landfills, then yes, recycling might be a good idea. Keeping materials in the loop means that we don’t have to produce new resource intensive materials, such as cotton, from scratch. However there are also issues with recycling.

First, toxic materials might result in toxic recycled products. In a recent case, artificial football turf, from recycled car tires, seems to be carcinogenic. Recycling is not desirable if football kids develop cancer as a result.

Second, although something can be recycled once, it does not necessarily mean that it can be recycled twice. So although we produce something by recycled materials, it may not be recyclable a second time. When it is worn out, it still ends up in the landfill or to be burned. Taking one more turn and having a second life is of course better than going directly to trash but it is not a final solution.

Third, recycling requires resources. Recycling processes require energy, the items to be recycled are moved around and transported, there might be environmentally unfriendly chemicals involved (for example in the case of textiles) and it requires money. These resources may be well spent money compared to things ending up in a landfill. However, if we instead reuse what we have and produce less waste, these resources can be saved and spent on other things.

Bea Johnson, of zero waste home, asks the thought provoking question: “What if our municipalities could shift the resources they spend on waste handling to other activities, such as schools and hospitals instead?” She has many relevant points.

Overall, the zero waste movement is doing a pretty good job in educating us on how to reduce our waste. It means fewer things going into our homes, particularly disposables, and fewer items being thrown out. Everyday. If we all did it, it would make a big difference.

Personally, I’m a bit of a late adopter in this area. I’m at this point trying to reduce everyday plastic disposables. I’m also pretty good at the DIY skincare and home cleaning supplies that Lauren Singer suggests. In terms of food packaging, although I’m recycling, I’ve got a long way to go in terms of reducing what comes into my home. On my wish list for this year is to start composting food waste. Many cities have composting schemes that you can subscribe to and in Bergen even certain houses/areas (as in my friend Turid’s case).

On the picture: buying milk directly from the farmer (Lovö Prästgård) using old Kockum milk jars. Buying directly from the farmer, also at farmers market, is a good way to reduce waste.

Are you making effort to reduce your waste? Please share your experiences.