Dissolve to evolve
Resortecs, the Belgian start-up that has developed dissolvable stitching threads and a disassembly process to simplify the process of recovering and recycling textile products, continues to make progress. Chief executive and co-founder, Cédric Vanhoeck, explains how.
Q: What was the starting point for Resortecs? When, where and how was the idea born?
A: Active disassembly is a research field in engineering that applies materials science to joining techniques with the goal of enabling the disassembly of complex products in an easy and cost-effective manner. I hold an industrial design engineering degree from TU Delft in the Netherlands and a brand management Master’s from Domus Academy in Italy. After joining the Antwerp Fashion Academy, I saw first-hand the huge disconnect between fashion and the circular economy. When a friend at the academy decided to quit because he didn’t want to be part of the waste problem, I realised that I might have the right combination of education and expertise to resolve the issue. I went back to the engineering drawing board to see if the principles of design-for-disassembly and active disassembly could be applied in fashion. Active disassembly makes the recycling of consumer products possible at industrial scale. Originally, it was developed for hardware products, but at Resortecs, whose name comes from the words ‘recycling’, ‘sorting’ and ‘technologies’, this approach and the technology are working on textiles.
What is Smart Stitch?
Our heat-dissolvable stitching threads, which have different melting points: 150°C, 170°C and 190°C. They enable brands to transform their products into recyclable, circular pieces from the manufacturing stage.
What does Smart Disassembly consist of?
Smart Disassembly is our patented thermal disassembly solution. It is five times faster than manual disassembly and makes it possible to recycle up to 90% of the original fabric.
This enables recyclers to unlock higher volumes of premium-quality material. A new oven, for which we raised €2.5 million in 2022 and currently have under construction, will have the capacity to process up to 4 million garments per year with low emissions and no material damage, so that fabrics can be used over and over again. Our aim is for these innovations in the way clothes are assembled and disassembled to empower clothing brands to rise to today’s environmental challenges at the pace and scale that the earth needs. And all without compromising on creativity, design or quality.
According to your figures, only 1% of textiles are recycled back into garments at the moment. Why is that? Fashion For Good said in 2021 that your technology could tackle a recycling bottleneck. What creates that bottleneck? What other solutions has the industry tried to put in place?
On average, each European Union citizen consumes 26 kilos of textiles and generates 11 kilos of textile waste each year, but, yes, only 1% of the material used in textile production goes back into garments, in closed-loop garment-to-garment recycling. On the bottleneck, the cost and complexity of most disassembling and recycling processes lead fashion brands to adopt polluting and unsustainable options such as landfill and incineration for the remaining 99%. The major cost driver and bottleneck is the fact that textile products are not designed for disassembly; and that disassembly is done with expensive and time-consuming manual or mechanical processes that waste more than 50% of the original fabric. When compared to other common end-of-life options such as incineration or landfill, our solution reduces textile waste by 80% and generates between 6 and 7 kilos less CO2 equivalent per pair of denim jeans. Translated into business figures, these eco-impact metrics mean reducing raw material loss by 50%, cutting CO2 offsetting costs by 50%, and saving more than €1.50 per pair of denim jeans.
In the hundreds of news stories that we published on the Inside Denim website in 2022, more than one-quarter (27.8% to be precise) contained the word ‘recycle’ in one form or another. What does this tell you about a move in the denim industry towards circularity?
It is clear that the use of recycled material is becoming a norm in the industry and this is not only because of the European Directives on sustainable textiles. Nevertheless, currently only pioneers and innovators such as Unspun and Bershka are working on the recyclability of their denims. Using recycled content does not automatically mean circular. Rather, it only represents optimisation of a linear supply chain. This is because using recycled material for a product that, later, may not be recycled (because it is too complex and costly to disassemble the product and sort the material it is made from) doesn’t solve the problem; it only postpones it.
After working with Unspun, H&M and Bershka, what knowledge of the particular challenges of recycling denim garments has Resortecs been able to build up?
Working with brands such as H&M and Bershka, as well as Decathlon [which launched a ski jacket designed for 100% recycling last December], proves that the Smart Stitch and Smart Disassembly technology is compatible with the pricing and the production requirements of big companies in the fashion industry. These collaborations with big brands prove that Resortecs represents a small change, but one with a big impact. What we have proved is that the challenge is no longer recycling or disassembly. The challenge now lies in how to recover the highest possible volume of discarded products in order to secure a stable, affordable and premium supply of recycled material, which brands are going to need to stay relevant, resilient and compliant.
Decathlon used your technology to develop the ski jacket it launched in December. What will need to happen in 2023 for us to see jeans that, like that jacket, are designed for recycling?
We have already seen jeans designed for recycling, powered by Resortecs, in Bershka stores across more than 60 countries. Unspun has been producing jeans designed for recycling, powered by Resortecs, since 2019. We will continue helping brands implement circular value chains in 2023, as we have been doing for the past three years. Brands need to understand that the need for efficient recycling is intensifying as a result of changing legislation, but also because of the growing pressure on supply chains from geopolitical and climate-related events. What remains important is that designing for recycling only makes sense if you, as a brand, also want to work on the reverse logistics needed to recuperate goods made from materials that you want to recycle and reuse.
What has been the experience of the brands so far?
The feedback we always receive from the brands we work with is about how easily they can actually apply our technology. There is, of course, a lot of work that goes into deciding the best products to start working with in order to create the best environmental and financial impact case, but from a technical perspective, it works better than brands expect. It’s still a challenge to make brands understand we are not only selling threads but rather a full solution that can and should be coupled with existing traceability and material innovations to really close the loop. Once they understand that, we can bring truly circular products to the market in keeping with the industry’s usual costs and quality and creativity standards. The ski jacket we launched with Decathlon, for example, incorporates our technology and a number of other innovations that make it future-proof at a retail price of only €45.
Chief executive and co-founder of Resortecs, Cédric Vanhoeck.
CREDIT: Resortecs
