If you knew that your old clothes would sit in a landfill for years on end as the demand for fabrics is increasing, would you still choose to put them in the trash?

According to a press release from H&M, in 2014, “the global production of polyester filament and cotton fiber was approximately 65 million tons. In 2020, the global demand for these fibers is estimated to be 90 million tons.” This means there is an increasing demand for polyester and cotton as textiles in the fashion industry and we are struggling to keep up with this increase. On top of that, there is a growing issue of clothes piling up in landfills.

So far a solution to these two problems has not been presented. Until now.

On Wednesday, H&M and Kering announced that they are working with textile upcycling company Worn Again on testing groundbreaking fiber-recycling technology that aims to meet the growing demand for cotton and polyester production worldwide. The “textile-to-textile, chemical-recycling technology,” as it is called in a Vogue.com article, separates and extracts the materials from old clothing, which is then re-spun into new yarns. In other words, a T-shirt’s linear life span — where it is made, worn, thrown away and left in landfills for the rest of its life — could be made circular, since it could become reusable.

What H&M and Kering are doing with Worn Again is the first of its kind. They are becoming innovators in the fashion industry with fabric recycling and proving that fashion can become sustainable.

By converting the reclaimed raw materials into yarn, creating new fabric and fashioning garments, these tests aim to demonstrate that the technology may be commercially viable, and may be able to provide an effective solution for the circular recycling of clothes and textiles. The process will not only provide an eco-friendlier means of sourcing raw materials for the fabrics companies use for garments, but also solve the problem of separating the materials of blended fiber clothes and removing dyes from polyester and cellulose.

There are so many companies out there whose only concerns are the net profits they make per year. H&M and Kering are stepping up as companies that are environmentally conscious and working to reduce the amount of waste that comes from the textile industry.

“In the long run, this can change the way fashion is made and massively reduce the need for extracting virgin resources from our planet,” Anna Gedda, head of sustainability at H&M, said in the press release. “Furthermore, it brings us closer to our goal of creating fashion in a circular model.”

Worn Again’s technology is entering the next phase of development tests. Forward-thinking global companies H&M and Kering, through its brand PUMA, will be monitoring the testing of this clothing recycling technology.

However, the two companies may only adopt the technology if it is deemed commercially viable. If it is not, they could continue production as it has been going for the past few decades, and we would see no decrease in the amount of fabric going into landfills.

Even if they do not adopt the technology, there may be another company that will. Just by announcing the technology and showing what it can offer has created the conversation about textile waste in landfills. It may not be commercially viable for H&M and Kering, but there is definitely a company that it is for. Hopefully we will see other fashion conglomerates following suit, trying to create a more sustainable fashion industry.

So the next time you think about throwing out that old, worn-out T-shirt, think about the landfills and try to recycle it instead.

Alexis McDonell is a junior magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at admcdone@syr.edu

Published on April 5, 2015 at 7:41 pm