Slow cycle In its present form, the clothing industry is a polluter of water systems and a climate baddy. Materials recycling is not a sufficient answer, the whole system must change instead, says an expert on the circular fashion economy. Text: Minna Hölttä Photos: Mikko Raskinen MY GRANDAD wore the same suit to weddings, birthday parties and funerals. My grandaunt’s wardrobe was so loosely filled that her winter dress, summer dress and party dress looked like valuable collector’s items hanging on display. It’s a different story today, in the era of ten-euro T-shirts method. Associate Professor, Fashion Research, Kirsi Niinimäki says a major change occurred at the turn of the millennium, when fast fashion took over the market. “The cycle has only intensified. There used to be four collections per year, but now Zara, for example, introduces a new collection at its stores every other week.” The volume of global clothes production has doubled in fifteen years. Some 6.4m tonnes are consumed annually in Europe alone. The service life has decreased by more than a third in the same period. An acquired item of clothing will be kept in the wardrobe for an average of three years and worn on 44 days. After this month-and-a-half of use, it is most likely destined for incineration or a landfill.
Valuable waste
The business model of the clothing industry is linear: you start with raw material and end up with waste. Only one percent of the materials used to make clothing is utilised as raw material for new clothes. Niinimäki notes that virgin raw materials are likely to increase in value. For example, the current world market price of cotton is low, but, as demand grows and the amount of available arable land shrinks, this is bound to change. The clothing industry generates about a tenth of global greenhouse emissions, more than shipping and international air traffic put together. Processing discarded clothes into raw material for new textile fibre would reduce emissions substantially and prevent the industry from losing €100b worth of raw materials. Many challenges remain on the path to a circular fashion economy. Some of these challenges are technical, such as how to separate different fibres from each other. Especially problematic is elastane, which is added to clothes to
“Everything affects everything in the circular fashion economy. This is why cooperation between different sectors is so important,” says Professor Kirsi Niinimäki.
make them more comfortable. Elastane cannot be separated from other fibres mechanically or chemically. In addition, it shortens the service life of clothing and releases colour more readily than other fibres.
Reddish-brown colourants can be extracted from willow bark. Natural pigments have been employed in textile dyeing for thousands of years.
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