The fashion industry did not always grow at the pace—or have the environmental footprint—it is known for today. My grandfather was a tailor in Tel Aviv in the 1940s, and the idea that anyone would dispose of a cherished item of clothing was unthinkable, almost like being invited to a friend’s home for dinner and tossing your formal plate in the trash after eating. What we now consider circular ideas of repair, reuse, and recycle, and of using a garment until its end, were not innovative ideas in my grandfather’s day but simply commonplace practices.
Today, however, the mindset of valuing quality and longevity is completely foreign to the fashion industry. We think nothing of disposing of an item after wearing it a few times. In fact, the average American disposes of more than 80 pounds of clothing per year. The financial and environmental costs of this wastefulness have become unbearable.
Ken Pucker’s article exposes fashion’s outsized footprint, which makes it one of the largest contributors to environmental pollution and degradation, from greenhouse-gas emissions to water waste, energy consumption to pesticide use, and much more. Additionally, the sector demonstrates a lack of transparency in the value chain, and a culture of subcontracting in the manufacturing stage, and demands short-term revenue for shareholders, all of which complicate their ability (and desire) to reduce the industry’s footprint. Finally, a complete absence of regulatory restrictions has allowed the sector to plan for year-over-year growth with no responsibility for the effects of this growth on people or the planet.
Consumers and companies are no longer tolerating the fashion industry’s pervasive environmental and social harms. Fortunately, we are beginning to see some change, catalyzed largely by the increasingly negative media attention and criticism by industry insiders like Pucker. Opportunities for innovative solutions exist across all areas of the value chain, including design, supply-chain technologies, and molecular recycling. This landscape of emerging solutions has made fashion an important pillar of our investment strategy at Closed Loop Partners, where we aim to capitalize circular-economy solutions.
Our portfolio companies give us hope that the fashion industry is serious about transitioning to a less wasteful future. They include Browzwear, which has built a cloud-based, virtual tool that replaces the need for physical demo-products in the early stages of product development; Algaeing, a multidisciplinary team of scientists, fashion designers, and creatives that has invented a biodegradable, algae-based fiber; and Dimpora, a materials company that has created a biodegradable membrane to replace the prefluorinated and polyfluorinated chemical-laden materials found in outdoor apparel. Some of our portfolio companies focus on the end of product cycle, including the textile-innovations company Evrnu, which has created reusable materials through molecular recycling.
I agree with Pucker that precompetitive collaboration is critical. Our work with other sectors has also borne fruit. Our innovation center’s Beyond the Bag initiative comprises a competitive group of companies working on an alternative to the single-use plastic bag. Our consortium of food-industry brands and manufacturers aims to eliminate single-use fast-food packaging with innovations throughout the supply chain. The consumer-packaging industry still has a long way to go to reach full circularity, but it is 20 years ahead of the fashion industry and can serve as a template for implementing circular practices and business models.
Fashion companies must embrace the sharing of knowledge and realize that no one benefits by holding solutions exclusively. By adopting new business models and ways of working that center reuse and repair strategies, businesses can both earn profits and help the environment. Some examples of circularity practices include the saving of raw materials for reuse, reducing customer attrition through product recapture, participating in the resale market, and incentivizing product returns. Businesses can lead in changing the consumer mindset—resetting it to that of my grandfather’s generation, of valuing quality and longevity.
Read more stories by Ron Gonen.