Closed loop recycling for more sustainability in the textile industry

Everyone is talking about recycling, and yet there are sectors where it is only used to a very limited extent - for example in the textile and clothing industry. The figures are alarming: less than 1 percent of textiles worldwide are recycled, but they are the third largest source of environmental pollution.

Of course, it doesn't have to be this way, as clothing manufacturer Fristads shows. The company has managed to create a closed loop recycling system for its clothing. In this interview, Lena Bay Højland, Product Director at Fristads Kansas A/S, explains how this affects the product range and what Fristads' vision is for further development.

How does your closed-loop recycling work?

Lena Bay Højland: In a nutshell, it's about collecting the used Fristads garments, removing the trims and things that cannot be shredded, cutting and shredding it and then making a new material out of the fibre. For this process, we are collecting the post consumer Fristads-garments and bring them to a circular partner.

After our partners received the used garments, they do the dissembling of the trims: They take away the buttons, the zippers and everything which is non-shreddable. Afterwards, they sort the material, then cut and shred it. This shredded fibre will then be sent to another external partner where we're adding other fibres to make the "new" yarn stronger. The final steps are then the spinning of new yarn, knitting or weaving and dying it. At the end of this process, we have a ready-made garment.

We have established the full process on how we’re doing this, and we have it certified. At Fristads, we believe in sustainability, and for us this goes hand in hand with responsibility. And to have proof of our concept and to proof our responsibility, we want the process to be certified.

How do you make sure that you get your Fristads clothing back?

Bay Højland: We take back our clothes from certain customers. We deliver our garments to particular customers and in an agreement with them we get it back. It is very important that we know exactly what waste we are having because our products are OEKO Tex certified, so of course we want to get this exact quality of products back.

The trick is: you cannot make a new product made of 100 percent recycled textile, because then you can’t guarantee a certain quality. So we need to blend our collected material with a virgin textile to make it strong and to deliver the quality demanded. There is no sustainability story without quality: quality and sustainability go hand in hand. So we need to mix our recycled material with virgin material.

Today, we have two products in our assortment, which are partly made of this recycled textile. The content of that recycled material is about 15 percent. Now you could either say "Oh, only 15 percent" or you can say "Wow, 15 percent!" – it depends on how you look at it. This amount may not sound much, but it's 15 percent more than a virgin material you would use.

The further innovation of this process will be increasing the percentage of waste. I would dream of 50 percent, and we are doing everything we can to increase the current percentage. We're using a lot of money and a lot of time and effort for developing in that direction and making sure that we're going to use more and more of textile waste in the future.

How do your customers respond to your initiatives?

Bay Højland: One of our customers is Post NL. They’re using quite a lot of our garments, and they have been the source of inspiration for Fristads. You need to find customers who are actually willing to work with you and to join your on this journey. And for that I should thank Post NL, because they have been a reliable and a great partner in this development, in the certification process and all the steps we have taken to create the product. In our case, you just have to be lucky to meet a customer who is as creative and as partner oriented as you are. And the more customers we meet like that, the more inspiration we get, the more innovations will come.

You already mentioned that you took a lot of time in this development – how much exactly?

Bay Højland: Two to three years, I guess. It's not so much about the process itself, because the process is not new. There have been recycled textiles before. It’s more about what the outcome is: the outcome to the level of the quality we want and the level of the waste we want to use for this. This is what took us time, because in workwear you cannot see the result of your work right away. It's not like a tasting sample which you taste and either like or don't like.

If you want to test the longevity of workwear, you sometimes need to give it six to eight months. You can use the laboratory to make all the necessary tests, like indications about the quality, abrasion, tear strengths, etcetera. But at the end of the day, the absolute real test is that when the actual customer is wearing it and using it every day. This is when you can monitor the progress, etcetera.

All the testing is not a business for impatient people. Before you starting all the testing, you need to have plan A, B and C ready. You can't go for plan A, then wait months for the results and then start plan B. You need to start them all at once, so that in six to eight months one of them actually gives you the result you want to have.

Do you hope that you can be an inspiration for other companies or as well?

Bay Højland: Absolutely, and we would be gladly sharing our findings that because there is a lot of textile waste in the world. Sustainability should not be a competition parameter. I would say it should be something which is given to all of us.