Humans have dressed since the dawn of time, out of an instinct for protection, but also as a cultural fact: through clothing we send messages about who we are and what we want. The fashion industry, with its enormous convening power at a global level, has a significant environmental impact. And the key to reversing it lies in the daily decisions we make. Choosing garments created under the circular fashion pattern is a great alternative that goes beyond mere use and throw away. Slow fashion advocates slowing down production through ecodesign, which limits the residual accumulation from the very conception of the garments. But it is still not enough.
On the other hand, it is necessary that each garment is conceived, designed and produced to have a long useful life, without a doubt one of the great challenges of our time. For this reason, La Vanguardia, through a series of debates focused on safeguarding the planet and the efficient use of resources, dedicated a table on circular fashion on September 27, bringing together a group of experts who unraveled their best arguments against of fast fashion.
The speakers raised the use of sustainable materials, the maintenance and useful life of the garments, as well as their return to the environment without contaminating it. A process that tries to get rid of waste and pollution through the use of products and raw materials that, thanks to reuse and recycling, will be able to continue in use for as long as possible, in order to achieve a prompt regeneration of natural resources. To achieve this, it is necessary to break the trend of compulsive buying normalized under the logic of the linear system of production-consumption-disposal.
Marilyn Martínez belongs to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, is a former Olympic sailor and philanthropist and a pioneer in promoting the transition of companies towards a circular economy before the European Union: eliminating waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use and regenerating living systems. In her intervention, she pointed out that the linear economy, consisting of extracting, producing and discarding, is reaching its limit.
Three years ago, the foundation found that 100,000 tons of clothing were thrown away in New York City each year and launched the Make Fashion Circular initiative, for businesses, fashion brands and recycling entities to encourage New Yorkers to keep wearing your clothes. In addition, it provided an interactive map with the location of more than a thousand collection centers. In its first year, this project facilitated the recovery of 583 tons of garments.
Marilyn Martínez states that in Europe people wear clothes an average of seven times before discarding them. Therefore, each year, 73% of the garments produced for the population of the entire continent cease to be used. To lessen the seriousness of this panorama, different technological initiatives and digital applications have emerged that sell used clothing.
The Fabricant, for example, creates value within the fashion industry without having a physical product, digitizing garments to create advertising campaigns or offering them to the public so that they can change the clothes they wear in their photos. In By Rotation, people can upload their clothes to rent them, as well as the Roberto Verino firm, which has just announced a new platform for renting its clothes. And Agraloop uses the pulp of residues from different crops to convert them into fabrics.
Enric Carrera, director of the Intexter of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), specialized in the investigation of sustainable fabrics and materials, affirmed that we consume more and more, but use less, prey to what he called “perceptive obsolescence”: a garment follows being useful, but its owner feels that it no longer contributes to the image that he wants to convey, because he believes that it has gone out of style, when in fact it is constantly fed back from the past.
Every year, he recalled, one hundred billion garments are produced in the world, so that textile production grows more than the total population. For the UPC academic, the dynamics of the fast fashion business lie at the heart of this situation, and he gave an example: how can a summer dress be offered online for just 3.49 euros? its set-up required extracting oil, carrying out an arduous sequence of polymerization, finishing, manufacturing and sale, a process that together can generate 25 tons of CO2.
According to the data collected by Carrera, we do not use 40% of the clothes that we keep in our closet. In Sweden there is already talk of köpskam, a concept referring to the hesitation of buying new clothes. “But this implies a cultural change: accepting to wear clothes that others have worn is an issue that is still not very accepted among us,” he added. However, the professor applauds with hope the upcoming legislative changes: in 2025 all EU countries will be obliged to implement the selective collection of textile waste. And in 2030, garments that can still be used will not be thrown away. “If we continue to produce the same amount as now, the problem will not change. We have to change the paradigm of production and consumption, making higher quality products so that they last longer physically and emotionally”, he concluded.
Albert Alberich is the director of Moda Re-, a social initiative of Cáritas that has become the largest used clothing operator in Spain. Ten years ago they launched three clothing recycling plants. Then they began to collaborate with centers, institutes and companies that study and improve textile pieces for quality recycling. They identified types of fibres, took into account the composition of the garments to classify them and take advantage of them in the best way and, three months ago, in association with Inditex, they released their first collection.
Moda Retains among its main objectives the generation of social and sustainable employment, the ethical destination of garments and the promotion of the social and solidarity economy, through the opening of second-hand clothing stores. Every year they collect more than 40 million kilos of used clothing, footwear and accessories that they treat in their comprehensive waste management plants. They have almost 7,000 containers in streets and buildings, and in the field of used clothing collection and treatment alone, their activity involves nearly 1,200 jobs, half reserved for people at risk of social exclusion, whose itineraries of insertion vehicles the company. They have 130 stores in 80 Spanish cities selling used clothing and they hope that in a couple of years they will be able to recycle more types of fibers. Due to all these factors, Moda Re-emerges as one of the most important circular fashion actions in southern Europe.
Jordi Bonareu, CEO of Hallotex, a company founded 25 years ago and a benchmark in sustainable textile manufacturing, is dedicated to creating products from textile waste, a transformation using technology and certified raw materials. During his speech, he recalled that climate change makes it increasingly difficult to make clothes with natural fibers, such as cotton, and challenged fashion designers: “You also have the responsibility of deciding what fabrics and fibers you use.”
He urged them to “reduce the number of samples and prototypes and worry about the waste their new designs produce, for the sake of quality and durability.” During question time, the public was interested in the fate of fast fashion stores that do not stop rotating their products. “The great challenge is to integrate them into the circular economy, either for social responsibility or to comply with legislation. Either we all do this together or it won’t work,” said Albert Alberich.
Last May, the Generalitat de Catalunya launched a pilot program, the Pacte per la Moda Circular, with the aim of the regional textile industry increasing the durability of its products, reducing the use of materials that are harmful to the environment and increase reuse with new business models. It is a voluntary agreement between institutions and companies from the different links of the Catalan textile value chain. Fifty-five companies and entities in the sector have joined this initiative, which Professor Enric Carrera described as “training for the legislation that the European Union will implement in 2025. What he proposes is to start doing it in a modest but forceful way, to increase the collection of clothes and the amount of recycled fibers in the garments”. For Albert Alberich, the pact is good news, “above all because it involves consumers and not just companies”, and advocated making the sale of used clothing “a real business”. “In England there are 11,000 second-hand clothing stores. In Spain we only have 300. And all of them are very profitable”, he pointed out. A change of mentality is urgently needed when dressing, designing, buying and reusing. What are we waiting for to move forward?
