While the road to textile landfills is wide, fast, and cheap, the path to zero waste is winding, slow, and costly. Suston meets the outdoor brands that have been striving for sustainability over convenience, reducing waste slowly but surely behind the scenes.

In theory, designers, manufacturers and product developers should all think about the end of a product before it is even created. Consumption and the number of discarded products are continually rising, many secondhand items end up in landfills or are illegally dumped in nature. As both production facilities as well as many dumping sites of textiles are in the Global South, the issue is often unseen by consumers in the Global North. Hence, the need to avoid as much waste as possible has been identified as a major and relatively unaddressed problem.

Are efforts underway to lessen the impact? Yes, say more and more outdoor brands trying to apply “zero waste” principles. But they admit that there is still much more to do.

The five “R’s” leading to zero waste

The main premise of the zero-waste philosophy is to avoid sending any waste to landfills. This involves production processes as well as consumption habits, ultimately striving for circularity. The principle is guided by the five “R’s“:

• Refuse: decline unnecessary products.
• Reduce: limit consumption to the essentials.
• Reuse: find multiple ways to use an item, also using it multiple times.
• Recycle: convert into reusable materials.
• Rot: compost organic waste.

 

Before a product even reaches the consumer, there are several waste issues in textile manufacturing: Defective items that don’t meet the quality standards in development and production; dyes and chemicals that create large amounts of wastewater and contribute significantly to water pollution globally; cutting patterns similar to cookie cutters leave scrap, off-cuts and access fabric.

But like making more cookies from leftover dough, brands have started to use textile cut-offs for other products to reduce waste material. Some noteworthy examples: With its Infiniti Series, Deuter has created a whole collection from ski bags to accessories by only using excess materials. The wool specialist Aclima uses Oeko-tex certified scrap fabrics from Aclima’s own production for its Reborn series. Another wool specialist, Woolpower, reuses their waste for making a felt material, used for products such as inner soles and seat supports.

Optimizing material usage to reduce waste

Tinkering with cuts, patterns and even production methods to reduce off-cuts is also important for many brands. After analysis and prototyping, Mammut, for example, was able to reduce the material use of their Dream Series of sleeping bags by 33 percent, creating four instead of three sleeping bags and almost zero waste out of one 20-meter fabric panel.

The mountain sports brand Salewa is working on avoiding waste as well.

“For garments like t-shirts with a simple construction, it’s easy. For jackets it gets a lot harder, but we’re trying to optimize the cuts as much as possible to avoid waste,” says Salewa Product Manager Matteo Rolando.

At the same time, smaller amounts of scraps are turned into give-aways, such as waterproof bags made from Gore-Tex fabric leftovers. With Salewa being part of the Oberalp Group (with brands like Dynafit and Wild Country), they also try to use synergies from a group perspective, explains Rolando:

“Our apparel producing brands work together and share as much as possible, such as materials, to optimize production processes and avoid waste.”

Similarly, Exped has a strong focus on the manufacturing aspects:

“Waste in production is a major issue,” explains Exped’s Sustainability Manager Muriel Weber.

“That is why we have optimized the weaving widths, for example, so that they fit either one or two mats.”

Exped also uses excess material to create accessories, such as toiletry bags or pumps for their mats.

“If it is there, it would be silly not to use it, also from a business perspective. However, we aim to optimize this with good forecasting and longer production cycles,” says Weber.

Using discarded products: From old to new

And then there is the discarded product at the end of its life, when it is no longer wanted, needed or fit for use. While a vast amount is still not being reused or recycled, outdoor brands are looking for new ways to reuse and upcycle materials when creating new products.

Mammut, for example, uses old ropes for their insulation layers. A mechanical recycling process converts the waste into high-quality insulation materials without the use of chemicals. The brand has been able to save 12 tons of rope waste and convert it for their fall and winter collection.

“The complexity of the recycling processes should never be underestimated,” says Helena Theba, Material Management Lead at Mammut, and explains how the variability of the ropes in diameter, quality and color required innovative solutions and robust logistics to make it work.

“A circular approach requires a lot of work and expertise.”

Mammut also came to a similar conclusion with their Dream Series sleeping bag project where, besides avoiding waste and using recycled materials, the goal was also to cut back on emissions in general.

“Longevity, weight and emissions can be contradictory. The calculations are complex, and the results were only indicative as the analysis was an internal pilot project,” Fabian Furrer, Head of Design for Equipment & Footwear at Mammut commented on their team’s result.

“Not to mention that we have a blind spot in the analysis, namely product care and lifetime, which could not be taken into account.”

Monomaterials for better recycling

Another approach to reduce waste is the use of monomaterial. This means that a product and all its parts is made from one ingredient only to make recycling it easier.

While this is difficult the more technical a textile gets (e.g. a 3-layer jacket with membrane technology), brands have been able to launch monomaterial shell clothing recently. One example is the Circular Design Initiative by The North Face. With its Dryvent Mono material, the brand was able to construct a 3-layer shell jacket and pants from recycled monomaterial instead of composite material, enabling its return into the supply chain at the end-of-use. Only the zipper must be taken out as standard recycling procedure.

“The whole thing is made out of polyester, from the shell fabric to the lining, to the membrane itself and to the glue that we use,” says Tristan Chate, Senior Product Merchandising Manager at The North Face, adding that the idea was developed in the brand’s A86A collection.

“We tried to build this collection with circular principles in mind, also in the development cycle. To disassemble and reassemble between different prototype stages to reuse trims and fabrics where we could, and to really minimize the wastage.”

The brand aims to make other products easier to take apart and to enable the use of resources for recycling.

“A large amount of work has been done to take the innovation from this collection and scale it more broadly through the line, where we can have a bigger impact on our overall footprint,” says Chate.

“So, there are other products in the line, that also use the Dryvent Mono materials.”

Product longevity and the role of the consumer

Despite progress, necessary recycling facilities, technologies and processes are not sufficiently in place quite yet.

This is why consumers – and their use of products, and their will to repair and reuse instead of buying new in particular – are crucial in the zero-waste calculation.

“Longevity of a product is the most important when it comes to calculating its footprint. This starts with the use of durable materials in production but also factors in repair as an important measure to keep a product in use for longer,” says Muriel Weber from Exped.

In design and production, the team is looking closely on performance and durability to avoid faults and people getting rid of a product if it is not light or comfortable enough to carry.

Mammut also has repairability of a garment already in mind at the design stage. For example, integrated cords and zippers can be replaced easier in case they break.

Also, more and more brands offer repair workshops and services in brand stores and at special events and tours – often for free. This is another good way to keep products in use and out of the landfills and incineration.

Is “zero waste” a trend – or here to stay?

The list of zero-waste initiatives and projects within the outdoor industry is long and getting longer. But will these investments pay off in the end? Are customers ready to pay the higher prices for circular products? Many argue that customer demand is of course one important aspect for strategic decisions and investments. But today, an even more important aspect is the European Union’s gigantic policy shift under the Green Deal-umbrella. In a few years’ time, it will most likely be mandatory for companies in the textile industries to live up to the different “R’s” leading to zero waste. Many outdoor brands are poised to stay ahead of the curve, and will be found at the forefront when this happens.

 

 

Lead image: Salewa / Simon Beizaee