Tricia Carey – Circularity: the future is now
Tricia Carey, Renewcell’s new chief commercial officer, envisions the day when circularity is no longer an option but a requirement. She observes that this entails a radical scaling of innovative circular materials and that current ‘wait-and-see’ attitudes are in effect high risk.
One more electric truck quietly drives through the gate filled with 40 tonnes of clothing and textiles discarded from a city 30 miles away. It is the 50th truck of the day to drive into the southeast regional recycling centre, which used to be a shopping mall. Once inside the large building with solar panels on the roof, the full container is dumped into a massive hole, and immediately large robotic arms start to pick up the textiles to sort into appropriate areas. Each garment is first scanned to see if it is in good condition to be resold at a local charity shop. The garments which are not wearable are scanned for fibre content and moved into a separate area. Every garment has a digital identification tag to allow for 98% accurate sorting. The cellulose-rich garments are moved into an area for ozone treatment and button removal, then over to the shredding area to be determined if they will proceed towards a mechanical or chemical recycling route.
Outside the wind rustles the American flag hanging on the pole as young children play on swings. The daycare supports the more than 300 parents working at the centre, the majority are women with well-paid jobs to support their families in the suburban community.
This business does not exist, but it will.
It must come to fruition if we are going to manage 17 million tons1 of textile waste in the United States. It is not why we need circularity; we are past that point. It is how are we going to develop the circular economy within the apparel industry?
Advertising and social media messages highlight the latest styles which are fed through fast fashion and overconsumption. As a society, we have been conditioned to consume more, but, finally, these ways are being questioned.
The need for change in the fashion industry has become the consensus position among brands, manufacturers, consumers, industry leaders and policymakers. The shift has led to significant interest in the principles of the circular economy, which seeks to reduce waste and promote the reuse and recycling of materials.
One way that the industry is looking to embrace the circular economy is through the use of textile-to-textile recycled materials. Through our research around the publicly stated circularity goals of global brands and retailers, as well as conversations with executives, we estimate that the demand for circular textile fibres in 2030 will amount to around seven million tonnes per year. That is a big number compared to an available supply today which is in the single digit thousand tonnes per year. Scaling of innovative circular materials must be a top priority for our industry.
Brands and retailers need to consider costs in a hyper-competitive and inflationary context. They have an understandable worry that working with innovative materials will hurt profitability. Encouragingly, we also see industry leaders bold enough to take a long-term view. Virgin resources will only become more scarce, and costlier, as the global middle class demand grows, and new regulations designed to make the very real costs to the environment and climate of virgin resource use visible in the product P&L [analysis]. Yes, circular materials may be pricier depending on your comparison. Still, as new highly efficient circular technologies keep chipping away at their temporary disadvantages of scale, brands and retailers will soon see relative cost differences evening out or even reverse. As brands approach the deadlines of their circularity commitments, they will find that cost is no longer the main concern, it is scarcity and access. In the race toward making fashion circular, “wait-and-see” is rapidly becoming the high-risk option.
Innovation for recycling is an investment, a major one. I have spent decades understanding the research, legal, business development, marketing and advertising investments to innovate just fibre developments, not to mention fabric and garment development investment. In my new role as Chief Commercial Officer at Renewcell, a disruptive sustaintech company based in Sweden, I am part of a team that makes fashion circular daily. We shred cotton-rich textiles which go through a dry and then a wet processing, bleaching, and are finally made into sheets of pulp for man-made cellulosic producers of viscose, modal, lyocell and acetate to make a new fibre. It has taken 10 years to reach the level of a full-scale manufacturing facility of 60,000 tonnes of Circulose pulp, and a doubling of capacity is already decided. It is progress over perfection to close the circle.
Within the circular economy for textiles, there are new players who were not part of the linear model - collectors, sorters, pre-processors, and processors are needed to enable a full-circle approach. We are now in a race to invest for scale and efficiency, in order for industries to grow and remain competitive.
There is an urgency for us to address this now. Of the 100 billion garments produced each year, 92 million tonnes end up in landfills. If the trend continues, the number of fast fashion waste is expected to soar up to 134 million tonnes a year by the end of the decade. 2 It is becoming too late to address climate impacts, water, energy and chemical impacts on the people and planet. Taking innovation, collaboration and policy changes which are needed to truly shift the apparel industry, we can finally put people at the centre of the circle. The framework for this is already set within the UN Sustainable Development Goals including SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 Climate Action, and SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals.
We will have new business standards and models. Fashion comes and goes, but style is a way to express yourself without stating it. Let’s adopt circularity as THE Style for decades to come, using 2023 as the opportunity to not just take steps towards circularity, but leaps. Let’s make fashion circular – together!
References
1 Textiles: Material-Specific Data (US EPA)
www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specific-data
2. 10 Stunning Fast Fashion Waste Statistics (Earth.Org)
www.earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste
Newly appointed chief commercial officer of Renewcell, the maker of Circulose recycled pulp, Tricia Carey formerly held various management positions at Lenzing Fibers to establish the Tencel brand in the denim industry. In roles that spanned marketing and business development in the Americas, she was also instrumental in the creation of countless collaborative collections with mills and brands. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Merchandising from The Fashion Institute of Technology, as well as certificates in Digital Marketing and Strategy from Cornell University and MIT.
Photo: Lisa Kato
