Tomra webinar addresses textile circularity

Norway-based Tomra and London-based Globuc hosted a webinar Feb. 7 to discuss scaling global textile circularity. The webinar corresponded with the release of Tomra’s white paper, “Transforming Textiles: 4 Key Beliefs to Enable Textile Circularity.”

Attendees heard from Cyndi Rhoades, co-founder and CEO of London-based Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems; Dunja Matanovic, engagement manager at New York-based McKinsey & Co.; and Vibeke Krohn, head of Tomra Textiles.

Challenges

Textiles are a growing waste stream. According to Tomra’s white paper, textile production has doubled in the last 20 years.

Matanovic said textile waste in Europe is expected to reach 9 million pounds by 2030. Given textiles' varying material composition and complexities, the industry currently lacks the infrastructure to tackle it.

“We don’t have a mature infrastructure for textile waste management today that allows us to efficiently collect and sort these waste volumes for recycling,” she said. “One of the biggest problems that we’re facing today is getting a textile recycling value chain functioning at scale.”

Krohn said that while the textile value chain is cost-efficient, it does not consider the climate impact of production. Tomra’s white paper states that the textile industry releases 1 gigaton of CO₂ each year, accounting for approximately 3 percent of the world’s total emissions, and only 1 percent of discarded textiles are recycled “in a closed loop.”

“We currently are operating a textile value chain that is linear,” Krohn said.

Rhoades said one of the biggest roadblocks to textile circularity is technology. Because technology has not kept up with the growing production rate, discarded textiles have accumulated in landfills. Mindset, or the reliance on the current system as it pertains to economics and profit, is another roadblock. Companies will have to invest in circularity by producing less, creating more sustainable products and investing in sorting and recycling infrastructure for discarded textiles.

“This is going to cost more than what [they’re] doing today,” Rhoades said. “This has resulted in inactivity.”

The path forward

The path toward textile circularity can feel daunting, but tangible advancements are being made.

“We can’t afford for circularity fatigue to set in,” Rhoades said. “[We can’t] allow this to be a trend. It has to happen.”

Legislation is changing the outlook of textile recycling in Europe. Matanovic cited the European Union’s (EU’s) Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles movement, which contains 16 pieces of legislation. Some of the topics covered in the proposed legislation include regulations for product design; establishing minimum design standards in recyclability, durability and repairability for products sold in the EU; and marketing to combat greenwashing by setting demands for specificity and evidence-based claims in textile advertising.

Matanovic also noted the growing movement toward extended producer responsibility (EPR) in Europe, the EU’s recent approval to ban the destruction of unsold clothing and the call to standardize environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.

Rhoades agreed that legislation is one of the biggest steps toward progress in the textile recycling space.

“Legislation can provide the stick to increase collection volumes [and] recycled content in products,” she said, adding that the real incentive will be in the form of cost-saving benefits for companies. “Companies are going to reduce CO2 emissions, there will be a stable supply of circular materials and cost savings over time.”

Rhoades stressed the importance of investing in sorting, preprocessing and recycling technology and encouraged investors to take a more holistic approach to their investment portfolios in textile recycling.

“We need that investment community to get more creative with understanding how this ecosystem is going to get up and running … [by] recognizing the connectivity between advanced collection systems, automated sorting facilities [and] mechanical recycling plants, as well as integrating digital tools for more traceability and transparency,” she said.

Rhoades’ company, Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, is developing an industrial-scale automated sorting and preprocessing facility for nonrewearable textiles. She said as the industry moves away from manual sorting, feedstock costs for recyclers will be lower.

Consumer behavior also could play a critical role as fast fashion brands continue to overproduce to meet demands. Although it is early to say whether consumers are willing to invest, Matanovic said that when they are educated about the importance of sustainability and brands supply more sustainable products, consumers tend to shop more sustainably.

Ultimately, all three speakers agreed that collaboration across the value chain is essential to scaling global textile circularity.

“This is where we need to step up as an industry. … We need collaboration across various [value chains],” Krohn said. “We need offtakers to start committing offtake. We need brands to commit, even at higher prices. We need the industry to start investing.”