Trending: In Fashion, What’s Outside Also Counts – Sustainable Brands

The fashion industry has woken up and is working to clean up its act (while it
may not in fact be the second-most polluting
industry,
the amount of
pollution
and
waste
created throughout the world on its behalf has been well documented) — with news
emerging almost weekly of brands reducing their water use and
emissions,
or more sustainable
materials,
or producing carbon-neutral runway
shows,
or coming together en masse to mitigate their impacts on oceans, climate and
biodiversity.

Solutions such as
RePack
and
Returnity
have emerged that take care of the external packaging waste rampant in
e-commerce, but there still remains the problem of what’s inside — those pesky
plastic polybags, paper and other protective packaging that, while helping to
keep apparel, footwear, etc safe and sound during transport — not to mention
what brick-and-mortar retailers wrap items in after purchase, which still
amounts to tons of additional material waste.

MATCHESFASHION rethinks the box

Image credit: MATCHESFASHION

More and more fashion and beauty brands are working to improve their packaging
by eliminating plastic lamination from boxes, introducing compostable materials
and re-using packaging. Now, UK-based luxury fashion retailer
MATCHESFASHION has partnered with packaging
producer Delta Global to overhaul its signature,
marbled box and Eco Luxe box — both of which are traditionally secured with the
use of magnets, which are unrecyclable. The new models, made from FSC-certified
materials with a water-based finish, feature detachable magnets — after which
the boxes are 100 percent recyclable and reusable.

“We worked closely with the MATCHESFASHION team to develop a removal technique
using perforation points in the box,” said Robert Lockyer, CEO of Delta
Global. “Once a customer removes the magnets, the box can then be flattened and
recycled.”

MATCHESFASHION has also upgraded all of its smaller packaging components, such
as notes and returns slips, to responsibly sourced and completely recyclable
materials, as well.

Fashion for Good pilot creating circular solution for polybags

Image credit: Fashion for Good

Meanwhile, Fashion for
Good
is on a mission to produce a closed-loop solution for the ubiquitous polybags
inherent in fashion retail and e-commerce. Through its Circular Polybag
Pilot, launched in December, the collective aims to minimize the use and
impacts of the roughly 180 billion virgin polybags produced to store, transport
and protect garments, footwear and accessories each year.

In partnership with adidas, C&A, Kering, Otto Group and PVH
Corp; along with recycling company** First Mile** and Cadel
Deinking — an innovator from the Fashion for
Good Accelerator
Programme,
the pilot is a first in the apparel industry to trial a truly circular solution
for polybags. Using post-consumer polybag waste, Cadel Deinking’s technology —
which deinks and removes adhesives from post-consumer polybag waste —
facilitates the creation of high-quality, recycled-content polybags; a solution
that could enable a truly closed-loop system.

Existing recycled polybags mostly use pre-consumer off-cuts and shrink wrap
waste, usually from the polybag production line, and are generally not
contaminated with inks or adhesives. But, considering that less than 15 percent
of all polybags in circulation are currently collected for recycling, this is
not a fully circular solution as sourcing of this high-quality waste remains a
challenge.

For the pilot, the retail partners will supply several tonnes of post-consumer
polybag waste. Cadel Deinking will deink and recycle the waste polybags into
pellets; then its parent company, Gaviplas, will manufacture the pellets
into new polybags that can re-enter the supply chain, creating a truly circular
solution.

After the pilot concludes, Fashion for Good will explore means to further scale
and mainstream the solution in the fashion industry. Results and learnings from
this initial pilot will be disseminated in a comprehensive report and announced
at the completion of this pilot. In the meantime, Fashion for Good and
the Sustainable Packaging Coalition have
produced a white
paper
detailing five steps that brands can take right now to reduce their impact.

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