SOCKS THAT SAVE According to the ABC’s War on Waste, Australians discard 6,000kg of textiles every ten minutes. Australians purchase on average 27kg of new textiles each year and then discard around 23kg into landfill annually. Textiles ending up in landfill is not only a waste of the resources that went into creating them, but when they break down in landfill they create methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Even more scary is the fact approximately a third of all the garments produced around the world never even leave the shop floor. So where do they all end up? Globally, 87% of all disposed textiles are sent to landfill or incinerated; 12% is mechanically recycled by cutting it or shredding it into fibre, insulation material or rags; and less than 1% is chemically recycled back to reusable raw materials. The effects that textiles have on the planet prove that the linear economy model of take, make and dispose is completely unsustainable. The onus is on brands to develop and implement sustainable practices that enable them to take ownership of their own product life-cycle. As an industry, we not only need to be more concerned with our supply chain but also with the post-consumer waste of our products. Textile waste needs radical intervention now. We’re all accountable, we all have a role to play and we should all be learning together. It’s time to stand up for future generations. Together, we can make the textile industry a leader in sustainability. But one Melbourne business is leading the way. What started as ‘Manrags’, a company selling quality socks and undies, has now evolved into ‘Upparel’ and has seen a huge growth in business since committing to take responsibility for its products through continually improving the design, and offering reuse, repurposing and recycling services for textiles. 30
Put a sock in it... Melbourne parents Tina and Michael Elias started their subscription service for men’s socks back in 2016, and began their antiwaste program in 2019 when they realised how all the products they had sent out would ultimately end up in landfill. Old socks can’t be donated to charity. So where are they going? Essentially they going to the tip. So they started by accepting old socks from customers and diverting them from landfill. “Our kids are going to grow up very privileged, as do most Australian children,” Elias says. “I kept thinking about my son or daughter turning around one day and going ‘well thanks for everything that you’ve done, but you fucked the planet in the process’. You know, ‘thanks for the car, which is electric, but I can’t drive anywhere because this whole place is a dump now because of you and your shit generation’.”
The COVID pivot In just four months they redirected 15,000kg of socks from the tip but they found there was a high demand for people to send them their other textiles as well. When COVID gave them the opportunity to pivot a little they began to accept all textiles. “Everyone was home and they were clearing up their cupboards, and charities were closed. So we began accepting all types of textiles, as well as shoes.” In one year they stopped 100,000 kg of textiles from being dumped in landfill, preventing the release of over 400,000 kg of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
So how does it work and where does it all go? Customers pay $25, redeemable on orders of stylish Upparel socks, to have a box of unwanted clothes collected from their home. It is then sorted and repurposed or recycled.
