Clothing companies will start selling more garments made from a single material this coming decade, a major shift in response to a European Union plan to require apparel to be longer lasting and recyclable.
Clothes often contain a mix of fibers, including organics, such as cotton grown on farms, and synthetics, such as polyester refined usually from petroleum. Garments with multiple materials—such as a T-shirt made from 99% cotton and 1% spandex—are difficult to recycle because separating the fibers is tricky.
Currently, less than 1% of the world’s textile waste is recycled into new clothes, with the bulk ending up in trash heaps, writes The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 7, 2022). The EU wants to change this. But the relatively short time frame promises to challenge the big players in fast-fashion, which may have to retool their design processes and rethink their sourcing, a topic we note in Supplement 5.
The EU recently published a plan that aims to put “fast fashion out of fashion” by 2030, referring to the trend of people buying clothes and throwing them out in less than a year. Clothing should be “long-lived and recyclable, to a great extent made of recycled fibers,” the EU said. Sustainability experts say that single-fiber, or monofiber, clothes present one of the best solutions.
The plan will affect not only Europe’s homegrown brands, but also American Nike and Levi Strauss and Japan’s Uniqlo or China’s Shein. EU nations have already agreed to collect discarded textiles separately from other waste by 2025.
German sportswear maker Adidas, for example, launched a line of single-fiber clothes last year including shoes, coats, T-shirts and pants under its “Made to be Remade” label. “These products are created with just one material and once they reach the end of their useful life, they can be cleaned, shredded and recycled for use in new products,” said the firm. Swedish fashion retailer H&M is stepping up repair services and offering rental and secondhand clothing as part of its push to cut waste and its associated greenhouse-gas emissions.
Classroom discussion questions:
- Are you concerned/aware of this issue?
- How does the proposed change impact the 10 operations decisions discussed in Table 1.2 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text?