A number of efforts by the fashion industry in the area of sustainability could also be observed in June. What is striking, however, is that not everything is accepted without hesitation. For example, even established systems such as the Higg Index are questioned and new materials are critically assessed for their suitability for an ethical, fair and sustainable industry. A lot has also happened in the resale and upcycling area.
Upcycling, recycling & resale
The young Berlin upcycling label Avenir wants to bring its made-to-order designs into stationary retail. Avenir takes old garments or textiles and leftover fabrics and creates new products from them, and only to order. Online shop Asos has since entered into a partnership with clothing resale service Thrift+.
With ‘Lala Forever’, fashion label Lala Berlin launched a recycling initiative for clothing and accessories this month. In future, customers will be able to return Lala Berlin goods that are in good condition to the company via the online shop and will receive a voucher for the Lala Berlin online shop in return. The delivered products are cleaned, refurbished and offered again at a discounted sales price. For this purpose, the web shop was supplemented with a separate area in which the ‘Lala Forever’ pieces are offered.
Meanwhile, Spanish textile recycler Recover raised $100 million (around €95.8 million) through the sale of a minority stake. This is intended to accelerate global expansion and expand manufacturing capabilities so the company can more quickly adapt to brands and retailers’ sustainability initiatives.
The US yarn producer AlgiKnit raised 13 million US dollars (12.5 million euros) as part of its Series A financing round. The start-up founded in 2017, which uses its own process to produce environmentally friendly yarns and fibers from seaweed, intends to use the money to invest in growth and collaborations.
innovation
On the occasion of the Global Fashion Summit 2022, the Danish brand Ganni presented a new initiative dedicated to the research and development of innovative materials. Through an internal program, the label will work with various start-ups to boost circular and greener production.
Meanwhile, the Dutch fashion label Neffa wants to use ‘biofabrication’ to reconcile fashion design and biology and turn the design process upside down. That is, it creates the material and manufactures its product in the same place.
The company Inversa produces next-gen leather from lionfish and wants to counteract significant damage to coral reefs and biodiversity. The fact is, however, that the lionfish, which is now considered a highly invasive species, could itself be threatened tomorrow. And hasn’t the industry finally realized that materials based on the exploitation and killing of animals are no longer in demand? Yvonne Taylor, PETA’s director of corporate projects, agrees, calling it “absurd” to use animal skins in a product, especially given that humans are blamed for the current levels of existence of the lionfish population.
Prizes, awards & criticism
The shoe company Tamaris was honored at the German Award for Sustainability Projects 2022 in the textiles and clothing category for its pilot project ‘Made with Mushrooms’. Fashion entrepreneur Renzo Rosso, meanwhile, received an award in the ‘Special Prize Italy’ category at the Green Awards 2022 in Berlin.
Not everyone was praised, however. The Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA), for example, called some Higg Index data “misleading” and asked certain brands to stop using it for marketing purposes. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), developer of the Higg Index, took the allegations to heart and promised to revise it.
The Chinese fast fashion giant Shein has also recently come under criticism for possible plagiarism and a lack of sustainability – although it should be noted that a business model based on the production of as many quickly changing and short-lived products as possible generally counteracts sustainability. To address this image, Shein entered into an agreement in June with The Or, a US and Ghana-based charity working to promote equity and sustainability in the apparel industry.
Shein established an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fund and will pay $50 million over the next five years to an EPR fund that supports communities suffering the consequences of textile waste . The provider does not seem to have thought of reducing this textile waste by reducing production, or a loss of image is preferable to a financial one. Meanwhile, the Euratex ReHubs initiative announced its intention to tackle the massive textile waste problem in Europe.
It also has a similar plaster effect when companies like H&M and Lululemon Athletica participate in the Fashion Climate Fund, which is endowed with a total of 250 million US dollars (234 million euros), instead of reducing their production or making their products more durable.
Tech platform start-up Impactbytes is the first company in the world to offer easy access to the sustainability certificates of tens of thousands of products from fashion houses and fair trade platforms and wants to combat greenwashing in the industry.