The Jeans Redesign project is constantly growing and now has a total of 100 participants from all over the world, including large companies such as H&M, Chloé and Tommy Hilfiger. It has helped produce over half a million sustainably sourced jeans and continues its mission to push the industry towards a circular mindset in denim manufacturing.
Launched in 2019 by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation (EMF), the program consists of guidelines and requirements that the industry must follow when producing sustainably and ethically produced denim. Brands that join the initiative are committed to making products in accordance with these guidelines, and many have already launched denim collections as part of the project.
Speaking to FashionUnited about the origins of the project, Juliet Lennon, the leader of the initiative, says: “We took the iconic product jeans as a starting point for this whole journey. We started to show that today it is possible to design and manufacture a garment for the circular economy.”
Lennon, who has been with EMF for three years and joined the project in 2021, said this circular economy was at the heart of the project’s original inception and was also at the heart of many requests from companies who didn’t know where to start.
“The current fashion system is broken,” she says. “We use resources to create products that are only used for a very short time and are eventually thrown away. In recent years, many companies in the fashion industry have started to take action to reduce their emissions. However, if we are to create a reevaluated system, we need to fundamentally rethink the way products are designed and manufactured. For that we need a circular economy.”
Based on this principle, the guidelines aim to ensure that jeans stand the test of time, are easily recycled and have less impact on the environment and those who make them. Since its inception, the project has already achieved a number of unexpected as well as foreseen milestones and made a number of adjustments to the ever-changing industry, while EMF continues to look towards a more sustainable future for denim.
The beginnings of the project
“Redesigning jeans was the starting point on the journey towards a circular economy for fashion,” says Lennon, also noting the excessive resources used to create the garment. “Jeans are at the heart of countless fashion collections, but they’re no exception to the industry’s concept of waste.”
First, 80 industry experts came together to create the guidelines and agree on the requirements needed to align with circular economy principles. “We wanted to help organizations go beyond the theoretical discussions about what it takes to create a circular economy: we wanted to test the principles, bring them to market and find out what the solutions are and what the barriers are,” adds Lennon .
Speaking of the early stages of the project, she says, “It was a really difficult discussion. In the past, organizations might have issued a collection with one or two characteristics, but we wanted to create guidelines with common definitions that meant these garments had to be durable, traceable, recycled and made from safe materials and processes at the same time.”
In February 2019, the foundation agreed on a minimum standard that became the first version of the guidelines for denim redesign – requirements that some organizations have since managed to surpass. A year later, the project grew to over 70 partners and began to set new standards.
“What’s unique about this project is that fabric mills, manufacturers, brands and retailers have committed to taking this action and making products to these guidelines,” explains Lennon. “Along the value chain, they collaborated with others in a pre-competitive way, both on and off the project.”
From H&M to Tommy Hilfiger, brand partners and their experiences
Wrangler is among the brands that most recently implemented the guidelines of jeans redesign in a collection by releasing a denim line made from 100 percent organic cotton. Like others, the American brand has unveiled new versions of some classic models that are either difficult to recycle or use environmentally harmful processes in their manufacture.
While many brands regularly release collections that follow the program’s guidelines, each has contributed to the cause in their own way, which has led to different outcomes.
“There are two layers to the milestones: the technical solutions, which we anticipated, and the more cross-value-chain collaboration, which was a bit unexpected,” explains Lennon. “We have already seen some companies apply the Principles not only to jeans but also to other products such as chinos, t-shirts, jackets and some accessories. This is an impact that we did not anticipate, but which we were very pleased about.”
Lennon highlights the collaboration with H&M, one of the retailers who has taken the partnership further with their own circular products policy for jeans, allowing its non-project related manufacturers to leverage the requirements as well. Additionally, the retailer has begun training its employees in these new skills, Lennon said, and spreading the knowledge throughout the organization.
“We’ve seen this collaboration across the value chain, which is critical, and companies are building on their in-house knowledge and capacity around circular design principles,” says Lennon. “They also talk about breaking down typical organizational silos, as their teams need to think about different processes in a very different way to make their jeans align with requirements.”
Challenges and developments since inception
Many brands have now committed themselves to the project and have already included it in a number of denim collections. When the guidelines were originally published, some had expressed concerns or difficulties with some of the requirements that they felt they could not meet.
“Rivets are a good example of this,” says Lennon. “Typically, rivets are used for either strength, performance or design reasons, but they hinder the recycling process. In the beginning there was a lot of resistance when we proposed to abolish them. The resistance was so great that we made it an optional requirement.”
“Two years later, 65 percent of brands have removed the rivets from their products, even though it was optional. Some have done away with them altogether, others have replaced them,” reports Lennon.
Some criteria were more difficult to meet than others, such as using cellulosic fibers, regenerative sourcing or finding a sustainable solution for zippers. However, many elements that participants initially found difficult are now widely accepted, such as the use of organic cotton, which was initially seen as one of the main challenges and is now used by 90 percent of participants.
“Looking forward to the next two years, we have a clear list of solutions that already exist, that can already be adopted, and where the limitations are that we need to overcome,” says Lennon. “We need to work together to expand these and keep innovating. This is exactly what we are doing with the current group of participants”.
To get to this point, the foundation went through a trial and error process, initially making no changes to the policy, to evaluate the manufacturing process and identify any solutions or gaps that were not initially identified. Then, in July 2021, the EMB published its first Insight report, setting out all these findings and the clear calls for action they brought.
After the report was released, Lennon said the project saw an influx of stakeholders and increased its capacity to 100 participants, which will be subject to updated guidelines that will be reviewed based on technological advances and developments in the industry. Lennon adds: “We have set new minimum requirements based on the lessons learned, which we still expect the participants to exceed, just as they did in the first two years.”
One of the elements introduced was a mandatory minimum percentage of recycled content for each garment, which was still optional in the early years of the project. This decision was part of the foundation’s goal to expand the use of recycled content and send a strong demand signal to the industry. Circular economy business models were also put on the agenda after some of the participants tried them out as part of the project. As an optional requirement, Jeans Redesign can now also collect data about these models and see what might come of it.
What to expect from the project
“Ultimately, the industry’s appetite for collaboration on these design and innovation solutions is far greater than we might have anticipated,” said Lennon.
This area has become a focus of the project, which seeks to emphasize the importance of collaboration in the industry. Lennon says the EMF is pleased with the other by-products of the project and that more non-denim products have been included in the guidelines. “That was the real intent of the project; a starting point to get really practical and show that it’s possible to go further,” she adds.
“In the future we will work with our participants on value chain collaboration and support them in overcoming innovations. We will also publish the next progress report in 2023, where we will take a look at what has happened in those two years, what obstacles have been encountered and what actions are being taken to overcome them,” concludes Lennon.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk, translated and edited by Simone Preuss.