Reduce, reuse, recycle

Earth Day is often credited with turning a counter-culture concern from the 1960s and 70s into a much larger environmental movement. Among the residuals from this 50-year-old awakening is the enduring slogan, “reduce, reuse, recycle,” which offered an easy-to-remember way to encourage people to adopt sustainable practices in their own lives. The idea was to prioritize them in that order: first, use less; then avoid throwing things away by using reuseable and “second-hand” products; and what’s left can, hopefully, be recycled and used in the same way, or it becomes something else. 

I’m not telling you something new, and you probably have already made the small leap in applying this familiar phrase to the textile industry, which is truly striving to operate in a more sustainable manner. But it’s not easy. 

Reduce

First, reducing the amount of product sold goes counter to business success, generally; however, reducing the amount of material used in making a product is good business for the end product manufacturer—only one angle of a much more complex issue, to be sure. But just this year I’ve seen how increasingly sophisticated computerized machines are making this possible. Artificial intelligence is likely to take a company’s ability to manage supplies efficiently even further. 

Fast fashion, and the fact that whatever’s new is so much more accessible than it’s ever been, has had an influence on everything we buy, including a host of other textile products and disposable nonwovens. We want what’s convenient and inexpensive, but this is not necessarily a viable way to operate longer term. To that end, MIT researchers have created a knit dress that can be altered for fit and design by applying heat via a programmed robotic arm. (See “MIT’s 4D knit dress created by a robot arm.”) There’s no escaping the fact that there is no better way to control waste than to just not make so much of it in the first place. 

Reuse

You’ve no doubt seen used Levi’s for sale in retail establishments. The program was designed to encourage consumers to turn in their used “vintage” jeans to be cleaned and resold—an initiative that’s had some success. But what of the massive amounts of textile products that do not have the benefit of a global brand name? Nevertheless, “repurposing,” which is a means to reuse, has been around for at least as long as I’ve been writing about functional fabrics. I’ve done multiple stories about used sails and banners becoming totes and handbags. 

Recycle

This is the really sticky one, and the subject of our feature, “Advances in textile recycling” by Debra Cobb, which specifically discusses new chemical processes that literally make new textiles from the fiber up. I am aware of the many issues that remain, not the least of which is ready accessibility to recycling facilities. 

Also challenging are the complexities of disassembling garments and other end products with zippers, grommets, buttons and other non-textile materials. And I could certainly do an entire feature just on the conundrum facing composite recycling, with adhesives binding together multiple layers into a single material. 

But we’ve started and we’re going to keep going, because the alternative is simply unsustainable. A commitment to circularity is not just the right thing to do, it’s good business, and I’m glad to say that so many in the textile industry are doing their part, and many more are coming onboard, expanding the level of commitment to environmentally friendly practices. 

Janet Preus is senior editor of Textile Technology Source. She can be reached at janet.preus@textiles.org.