The upcycling of deadstock is the ‘new black’ for many an eco-conscious brand. But a bigger trend is under way, behind the scenes and across large parts of the denim supply chain, to reduce and recycle post-industrial and post-consumer waste. New appreciation for what is increasingly considered an unused resource is paving the way for what could be the fashion industry’s first circular economy at scale. 

Charities love denim. For goodwill organisations that collect used clothing the world over it is a prized item in the painstaking process of extracting value from piles and piles of unwanted goods. Jeans are relatively easy to identify and segregate out of a stream of not so interesting and highly heterogenous stuff. A vintage pair of jeans can bring in good money if suitable for resale. If not, these mostly monomaterial and monocolour clothes will readily be redirected to a recycling facility where anything made in cotton is in high demand.

In the factories that spin yarns, weave fabrics, cut and sew clothing and in the laundries that turn them into finished goods, a certain amount of raw material goes to waste as well as all products that do not meet quality standards. These are now increasingly recycled back into production, as part of the zero waste policies that are being implemented by many, if not all, manufacturing facilities. This new thinking can also be called “process optimisation”, as Ann Runnel, the CEO and founder of Reverse Resources, wrote in a blog post earlier this year. The organisation, which seeks to build a new business model for post-industrial waste in the apparel industry, believes that half of the spinning waste and most of the overstock and deadstock fabrics from mills and garment factories are so highly reusable that they should not even be considered “waste”.

New in-house logistics 

However efficient a mill is, each stage of the garment making process inevitably generates a portion of unusable or leftover material, and pressure to increase recycled content is now giving these secondary resources new cachet. Isko, based in Turkey, says that when raw cotton is spun into yarn, typically 10% is lost. Ten or fifteen years ago, companies would not mention the reintegration of spinning waste into their products, now the reused fluff is as precious as organic cotton!

Increasingly, vertical mills are setting up their own in-house waste processing facilities, as has done Soorty. The Pakistan-based company’s in-house plant can recycle 10 tonnes of material per day for its spinning, fabric manufacturing and garment making activities. It has recently invested in new machinery to address growing demand, which is now 300 tonnes monthly, Eda Dikmen, marketing manager, tells Inside Denim. It also buys used jeans on international markets, which include charities, says Umer Tahir Rana, Soorty’s senior manager marketing.

Ironically, the process of recycling used clothing generates its own leftovers. Jeans made in blends with elastane or polyester must be removed from the feedstock, as well as all trimmings. These time-consuming operations must also be reduced to a minimum to keep costs in line with market expectations. “We need to be very, very picky during the sorting and preparation stages, as we cannot accept any impurities for spinning. Ideally, we need 100% cotton jeans,” says Mr Rana. Once the post-industrial and post-consumer cotton waste is shredded back into fibres, they have endured great mechanical stress, and will need to be blended with a majority of longer fibre virgin cotton to improve the quality of the yarn. Soorty’s recycled cotton yarns can contain anywhere from 5-20% recycled cotton, depending on brand specifications. “Adding more recycled content may compromise the ability of the product to survive washing processes,” he says, adding that it is essential to “offer our customers durable products that will last."

Turkish mill Orta Anadolu has committed to a zero-waste policy and works in close partnership with Turkish used clothing collector and processor Gama. “We send them our textile waste, post-industrial fibres sorted by polymer or composition and colour, as well as cutting waste, which Gama recycles into new cotton yarns,” Sebla Önder, the company’s sustainability manager, said, speaking at a webinar on circularity organised by Kingpins. This organisation has allowed Orta to generate 650,000 kgs of recycled cotton last year and it expects to reach 1 million kilos this year.

As part of its strategy to close the loop, Turkish mill Bossa has implemented a zero-waste policy since 2019, says Özge Özsoy, head of marketing. The company uses pre-consumer waste obtained from leftover raw materials generated in the fabric and garment production process. It is also collaborating with its customers and municipalities in Turkey to collect old jeans. In its 2020 sustainability report, the amount of recycled cotton represented 9% of its total production, and it plans to bring this proportion to 15% this year.

To increase its production of post-consumer recycled (PCR) cotton fibres, Sharabati Denim has recently added an open-end spinning line on its site in Kadirli, Turkey, as it says this spinning method tolerates shorter fibres.

As part of its “Passion for Denim, Passion for Life” mantra, Çalik Denim has invested heavily in reprocessing waste. “Our E-Denim concept is a candidate to be the most sustainable product in the industry as it was developed with circular design in mind,” says Serhat Karaduman, the company’s deputy general manager. “As the amount of recycled fibre increases in ring yarn production, there is a decrease in ring yarn product quality. To keep the quality and recycled material content high, we use 100% recycled open-end yarn as the core and integrate it into a ring yarn. This step is followed by wrapping the core yarn with recycled good-quality cotton to produce the ring yarn. In addition to this, we add recycled Tencel to the yarn to achieve the maximum amount of recycled content that can be technically made in ring spinning.” With this innovative and patented process, the percentage of recycled content in a Super Stretch E-denim fabric can reach up to 40-45%, the company says.

Designing out waste 

Denim mills are making progress in reusing their own waste, but to increase the portion of a used garment that can be recycled requires that brands do their part by designing out unnecessary elements. A pioneer in this thinking, Dutch brand Mud Jeans has purposely reduced the number of buttons and rivets, and does not sew a leather patch on the back. These are some of the measures that increase the proportion of used jeans that can be recycled into fibre. The Jeans Redesign project launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation tackles this issue point-by-point in its guidelines.

Mud Jeans has been applying circular thinking since its foundation in 2013. Its two main fabrics blend GOTS-certified organic cotton with post-consumer waste (PCR) cotton, the stretch version has 23% PCR and 2% elastane, whilst its rigid fabric is made with 40% PCR. The waste is processed and spun back into yarns by Recover and woven into denim by Tejidos Royo, both companies based in Spain. Cutting, sewing and garment finishing is done by Usetex International, on a single site in Tunisia, which further reduces the environmental impact of the products the brand sells.

The strength of Mud’s circular system is its small supply chain, says Laura Vicaria, Mud Jeans CSR manager. “We know that the majority of our reduced impact is due to the use of recycled fibre, as cotton farming has a big impact that is avoided by using recycled cotton and organic cotton,” she says, drawing on the brand’s 2019 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). She is now preparing the next edition.

Mud Jeans now uses stainless steel buttons, which she says was necessary to obtain Nordic Swan certification, and the clothes are sewn with a polycotton thread. “We are looking for a more sustainable alternative, maybe in the lines of a biodegradable polyester sewing thread, but it would need to have the necessary strength for denim garments,” says Ms Vicaria. “We want our jeans to be sustainable but also high quality and well made so they last long, can become vintage and will be easy to recycle."

The other key element of Mud Jeans’ circular system is its leasing programme in which customers pay a monthly fee and can return the product after one year of use. In 2020, for the first time, half of the brands’ clients rented their jeans. “Our founder, Bert van Son, says the cultural timing is now more conducive to leasing, thanks in part to online platforms such as Netflix,” says Ms Vicaria.

Despite the leasing and take-back programmes it has set up, the brand does not collect enough jeans for its own recycled cotton needs. This is where collective initiatives can make a difference.

Local loops

As seen at Mud Jeans, at Orta with Gama in Turkey and at The Denim Project in Guatemala, the creation of local recycling loops is slowly scaling up the process of closing the loop. The Reverse Resources Software as a Service (SaaS) platform aims to track and trace post-industrial cutting waste to buyers seeking either to reuse, resell or recycle it, which it believes could unlock a $15 billion market. “We see this as a way to ‘bend’ the current waste supply chain into a circular model and provide a viable business for all parties involved,” says Marieke Kokkelink, sales and research lead for Reverse Resources.

Its innovative platform has been set up in Bangladesh. Known as The Circular Fashion Partnership, it is led by Global Fashion Agenda, Reverse Resources (RR) and The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). It is also supported by 17 global brands who are collaborating with RR to mobilise garment manufacturing facilities to join. “We train their staff to better manage waste and segregate off cuts from cutting tables,” says Ms Kokkelink. These fabric scraps, sorted by composition and colour at the factory, are picked up by waste collectors, who will remove any remaining contaminants, log the ‘merchandise’ on the platform and take care of billing and shipping.

“We are striving to make this stage of the process more transparent, as in the informal economy, there can be up to four or five intermediaries involved in this ‘market’. Our goal is to make them the logistics managers of the process,” she says. Once sorted and quantified, recyclers can place their orders on the RR platform. Brands can also have a clearer picture of the waste their production generates, and trace it, the start of a transition to a circular model. “This system creates a business case for all the players in the system, ensures higher quality waste and reduces cost,” she says. Information provided by the platform can be used for CSR reporting and GRS (the Global Recycled Standard) certification.

This programme follows up on an earlier project in the Mediterranean region, launched in 2019 and known as SwitchMed. A tender set up by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), it involves denim manufacturers based in Morocco and Tunisia and brand partners Nudie Jeans, Diesel and PVH. A full year was necessary to map out waste, and recycling trials are now under way. “We expect demand to be upwards of 200,000 tonnes, and supply could be around 360,000 tonnes yearly,” says Ms Kokkelink.

While Europe may not have the manufacturing infrastructure of other regions to generate post-industrial waste, it is where key players in a possible circular economy are based, namely the brands, the consumers and the companies investing in recycling technologies. A number of projects are seeking to build up closed loop connections, as is Accelerating Circularity in the USA and The Denim Deal, part of the Dutch government’s Green Deal Circular Denim programme. It has attracted 30 international partners seeking to make post-consumer recycling the “new norm” within the denim industry. Fibersort, an automated sorting machine developed by Valvan and Wieland Textiles, both based in the Netherlands, is an important element of the programme as the machine should speed up and reduce the cost of segregation. Denim manufacturers Bossa, Çalik, Ereks and Orta Anadolu are members, along with Gama. Brands involved in the programme include Mud Jeans, Scotch & Soda, Kings Of Indigo, House of Denim, Kuyichi and PVH. They have pledged to produce three million jeans garments containing at least 20% PCR cotton.

Looking ahead 

Mud Jeans has already identified the next stage of its circular design ethos. “Our long-term goal, and the most exciting, is the Road to 100. We plan to make jeans from 100% post-consumer recycled cotton by mixing fibres that are mechanically and chemically recycled,” says Ms Vicaria. She says the company has reached the limit of mechanical recycling with its 40% PCR cotton content, and the only way forward is to include cotton that is chemically recycled back into fibre. The brand is working with Saxion University, in the Netherlands, to develop and scale up a process that turns cotton fabrics into manmade cellulosic fibres, a project funded by Tech for Future. “This would make it possible to reach 100% recycled content,” she says. While the pandemic has slowed progress, the first samples are expected to be delivered by the end of the current year.

Many companies are working on chemical recycling processes that regenerate cotton-rich used clothing into viscose or lyocell, or any other manmade cellulosic fibre (MMCF). But, as these technologies scale up, they will add to the demand for used cotton clothing, possibly reducing available feedstock for mechanical recycling. It is as yet unknown which of the two methods, mechanical or chemical, has a better environmental profile. It is believed that mechanical recycling is less energy, water and chemical intensive, but the shorter fibres generated by mechanical processing limits their reuse as they must be strengthened with the addition longer fibre virgin cotton.

The presence of elastane is another challenge in the recycling of post-consumer goods. It is believed that 80% of jeans currently produced contain elastane fibres. Ms Vicaria says limiting elastane content to   2% is an acceptable threshold. Higher stretch yarn content will pose problems. In the highly time-consuming process of recycling waste, especially post-consumer, anything that slows it down or impacts its quality will clog the wheels of closed loop recycling.

Turkish mill Bossa says that 1,000 old denim jeans can be turned into 2,000 metres of 20% post-consumer recycled denim blended fabric.

PHOTO: Bossa

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