SOURCING
mechanical recycling’s constraints. The retailer has partnered with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel to develop a way of recycling blended textiles into new fabrics and yarns without any loss in quality. It has also tapped Re:newcell, a firm that dissolves waste cotton and viscose into high-quality raw materials, for future collaborations. “So even if there are challenges, we see great innovation breakthroughs,” said Cecilia Strömblad Brännsten, acting NEXT STEPS environmental sustainability manager at H&M. Potential contamination is why mills like Candiani in Italy opt to use As talk of a “circular economy,” where products are pre-consumer fibers, their own cutting-floor scraps among them, made to be reused and recycled rather than thrown away, in their recycled denim. Candiani works with Lenzing to blend its grows more vociferous, the spotlight on recycled denim has also recycled cotton with Refibra, a type of Tencel that the Austrian become brighter. fiber manufacturer creates using cellulose and post-industrial Mud Jeans, for one, has crafted a business model based on cotton waste. selling jeans, taking them back at the end of their life, and then Lenzing makes Refibra using a closed-loop chemical recycling those old jeans into new ones. Through trial and error, the process, a tack the company says neither compromises fiber company has honed its logistics to an art. strength nor limits the amount of recycled content. Still, the brand is keen to increase the proportion of recycled Candiani’s Re-Gen denim, for instance, comprises 50 cotton it uses per garment—40 percent, which is higher than the percent Refibra and 50 percent pre-consumer recycled cotton industry average. It’s hopeful, though. in both its warp and weft. “There is no fresh, raw cotton “We’re just starting to come to a tipping point where we get econwoven into this denim,” said Marykate Kelley, the mill’s omies of scale,” said Dion Vijgeboom, co-owner of Mud Jeans. “So, we’re marketing manager. getting to the point where it’s becoming interesting to work like this. l H&M is another company eager to overcome fabric will be inferior and it will rip easily.” The provenance, and chemical composition, of other people’s throwaways can also complicate matters. “You don’t really know where the denim comes from,” Dahlberg said. “And they could come from a country or brand where the legislation of chemical content is not as tough as the one that we follow.”
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"S O E V E N I F T H E R E A R E C H A L L E N G E S, W E S E E G R E AT I N N OVAT IO N B R E A K T H R OU G H S ” — CECIL I A ST R Ö M B L A D B R Ä N N ST EN, H& M ACT IN G EN V IR ON MEN TA L S U STA IN A B IL I T Y M A N AGE R
WEARABLE SUSTAINABILITY Recycled denim is no longer a niche category. Here are some of the high-street brands making post-consumer recycled cotton jeans accessible to the masses.
MUD JEANS
H&M
ASOS
JACK & JONES
TARGET
LINDEX
Thirty-six of Mud Jeans’ 40-plus styles each comprise up to 40 percent post-consumer recycled cotton—twice the industry average. The company gleans much of that content from jeans that its customers return, although it accepts other brands as well.
In 2014, H&M debuted Close the Loop, a line of denim derived from reclaimed cotton fibers from its garment take-back program. The capsule, which includes looks for men, women and children, has since become an annual ocurrence.
ASOS works with Recover, a Spainbased textile recycler, to source the postconsumer denim fibers that go into its recycled jeans. The mechanically shredded fibers are then mixed with virgin cotton made in Africa to create yarns strong enough for re-spinning.
Jack & Jones, a subsidiary of the Danish retailer Bestseller, launched a pilot this year with two styles of jeans that utilize post-consumer recycled cotton. To buttress the shortstaple fibers, the firm adds Better Cotton or organic cotton to the mix.
When Target introduced Universal Thread, its sizeinclusive line of denim, in February, it was mindful of its pledge to use more sustainable fibers. Post-consumer recycled cotton makes an appearance in select styles, along with other better-for-the-planet materials like Tencel.
The Finnish retailer one-upped its own resource-conserving Better Denim line when it introduced Even Better Denim in the fall of 2017. The latter range includes more sustainable materials such as postconsumer recycled cotton and polyester derived from recycled plastic bottles.
RIVET NO.5 / APRIL 2018