Fashion turns to technology to tailor sustainable solutions

At the cutting edge of fashion and science, innovators are setting a new trend with a circular model of consumption. Around 15 percent of what we collect cannot be reused, and mostly has to be downcycled into an item of lower quality – or sent to landfill.” Green is the new black Fast fashion is on the rise – according to McKinsey & Company research cited by Greenpeace, the average global consumer now buys 60 percent more clothes per year and keeps them for half as long as they did 15 years ago – and a ready supply of cheap garments is driving a culture of overconsumption, with catastrophic results for the planet. “We need to rethink how we make and consume our products, making the shift from the linear economy where products are disposed of after use, to a circular economy – where we focus on keeping products and materials in the loop as much as possible.” Consumers are getting on board – a global survey of 15,000 people commissioned by ING and released in February showed 61 percent of consumers would be less willing to buy a company’s product if they discovered it was performing poorly on environmental practices. “I’m happy with what we’ve seen among the consumers we’ve surveyed, that brands have to take action because consumers demand it.” The cutting edge Pre-pandemic, the fashion industry’s overall waste was predicted to increase by around 62 percent from 2015 levels, reaching an annual total of 148 million tonnes by 2030, according to a 2017 Pulse of the Fashion Industry report by the Boston Consulting Group and Global Fashion Agenda. Our technology doesn’t solve all the issues, but creates links between different players from upstream and downstream of the value chain.” ING’s van Dun agrees: “Blockchain technology is key in making the supply chain more transparent – this is a really important technology.” The race to recycle For those garments that don’t make the grade for reselling, environmentally friendly recycling solutions are improving too, explains Chiara Galimberti, business development director at Worn Again Technologies, the company behind a new pilot R&D facility in Redcar, England, which aims to keep more existing textiles in circulation – and out of landfill.