7 minute read
Interview - Waste2Wear
FIGHTING
GREENWASHING GREENWASHING
Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Orla Govaerts, Communications Manager from Waste2Wear about recycled ocean fabrics, their transparency blockchain, and future plans and projects.
By Beth Cope
Waste2Wear is a recycled textiles company founded in 2007. Due to the textile industry being a terrible polluter, from the outset Maissan, CEO, Founder and Orla Govaerts’ daughter, was looking for a better way to produce textiles while in Shanghai in China. Back in the early 2000s she was working with a number of different plastic bottle recycling companies to try and find the perfect way to make good quality yarns from recycled plastic bottles, despite the difficulty of the process. This includes breaking down the plastic bottles into pieces, then pellets, which are extruded into a floss-like fiber which can then be made into yarns.
“These yarns just weren’t long or strong enough to make good quality fabric, they kept breaking, until a breakthrough in 2007, in which Vision Textiles, Waste2Wear’s previous name, was founded,” says Orla Govaerts, Communications Manager from Waste2Wear. “So, since 2016, our core business is for recycled polyester, and we’ve really grown in the sustainability market.”
OCEAN FABRICS
Since 2018, Waste2Wear has been making ocean fabrics. “We have, in the industry, the highest ocean plastic content in any fabric, which is 30%,” says Ms. Govaerts. “Our closest competitor has 10%. We always applaud our competitors because we want everybody in the textile industry who’s making polyester to make it recycled, there’s absolutely no need for virgin polyester. So, with our ocean plastics, we collect them off the coastline. We’ve worked very closely with a number of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and universities in China to find out which would be the best areas to collect ocean plastics from. They’ve identified areas along the Yangtze River, which are heavily polluted and like catchment areas for plastic. These areas are so polluted that fishermen can no longer fish there. We now contract a number of former fishmen to give them a new livelihood.”
Waste2Wear’s collectors find plastic at least 500 meters from the shoreline of the Yangtze River. “If I lived 10 kilometers from the shore, and if I was to pick up a bottle, I can tell you it’s pre-landfill, not pre-ocean,” explains Ms. Govaerts. “So, we’re very specific about these 500 meters. We prefer to get plastic before they begin to degrade; it can still be used to make fabrics, but it’s not of such high quality. In 2018, our research and development team came up with a new method of recycling a new plastic called polypropylene, which is one of the world’s
most abundant plastics. Only about 1% of it is recycled. It’s the kind of plastic that goes into domestic appliances and detergent bottles. We know that we’re the only company in the world making very durable and strong bags and packaging out of recycled polypropylene.”
TRANSPARENCY BLOCKCHAIN
Fridges are taken from dump sites and brought into a warehouse where the plastics can be separated from the metals. “We break down the plastic into pieces of pellets, the fiber, and then into yarns,” says Ms. Govaerts. “It’s never going to make good quality clothing, but it makes incredibly durable shopping bags and packaging. In 2018, we introduced the textile industry to its first blockchain technology. At each step along the way, every batch of production that goes out from their factory is sealed with the non-dual duplicable key and that gets added to our centralized computer system. This information is then made available to our clients.”
“We add Quick Response (QR) codes to our products that are delivered to the consumer,” says Ms. Govaerts. “For example, if you’re wearing a T-shirt that’s made by waste, you can that QR code, and immediately see that maybe eight bottles went into making this; you can see the environmental impact report. This gives consumers all the details of the energy savings of their products, at least 86% less water, 75% less Co2, and 70% less energy used in general than non-recycled fabrics. They can also watch a video of exactly how the bottles are broken down and made into our products. All our factories are Global Recycling Standards (GRS) Certified. That is what we offer on the blockchain.”
TRUTH SAYERS
Waste2Wear has been providing clients with chemical analysis tests since 2018. “This will test any kind of product, plastics or fabric, and we can analyze what is in there, if there is any recycled content in particular,” explains Ms. Govaerts. “If there is recycled content, then what percentage is it? This is important for so many clients that are being sold products. A lot of companies think they are buying recycled polyester, but in fact, it’s a fake. We can determine that at our premises in Shanghai within our technical team.”
The company now collaborates with German laboratories to independently verify their work. “They have verified that it is, in fact, a very accurate way of confirming what content is in the material,” says Ms. Gov-
aerts. “That is the world’s first independent system that can actually verify whether you are carrying recycled polyester. We recently had a law firm from London come to us claiming that a company has sold them materials, but they’re unsure about it. Reports state that up to 50% of the material that is sold as Repurpose Technologies (RPT) is in fact fake. Hopefully, we can see this technology as a new standard moving forward.”
EFFECTS OF COVID-19
Waste2Wear saw a hiccup in the market at the beginning of the COVID Quarter. “That was because fashion brands were just coming to a standstill,” explains Ms. Govaerts. “Before they started to sell online, there was definitely a freeze for a while. We were kind of reinventing ourselves, as we do all the time. We are making RPT face masks, which have been visually popular. At the same time, we found that the promotional industry, which is rather wasteful, has decided, through demand mainly, that they need to look more at sustainability. We’ve had a lot of uniform companies come to us, cleaning companies from around the world. For example, the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania. We’ve just made their new uniforms for the park rangers dealing with the chimpanzees. People are demanding transparency, and recycled content.”
LABOR-HEAVY PROJECTS
Waste2Wear collaborates with NGOs and universities within their Ocean Plastic Project. “They guide us to where the best locations are as to where the plastic forms,” says Ms. Govaerts. “Where we are most needed, and we work heavily with them. It’s a more costly process because of the labor involved. We’re proud to say we have 33.3% content in our fabrics. I’ve been out to the recycling factory, pre-COVID of course, and you have these very large silos with 3500 tons of the same kind of plastic. So, it takes an awful lot of labor to collect that much of the same kind of ocean plastic. Eventually, we will get to the day when we can fill three of these silos, and we’ll have 100% ocean plastic. The less plastic going into the ocean, the better.”
FUTURE OF WASTE2WEAR
In 2022, Waste2Wear will be launching recycled nylon products. “We are very excited about this,” says Ms. Govaerts. “We are already making hard plastics for food containers and drinking water bottles. We’re supplying to an eyewear company, little containers for contact lenses. It’s made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE). We’re also in the process of making Christmas baubles out of the insides of old televisions. They’re in the testing stage right now, but we’re amazed every time we have discussions about it.”
“We get our ideas literally from consumer or client demand,” explains Ms. Govaerts. “Recently, a client asked if we could start making shower curtains. That’s something we never considered, but we’re now looking into it: picking the right kind of fabric, adding the right kind of finishes. That’s also how we got into making plush toys, for example. We also do floor underlay, all kinds of different things. We’ve got a large investor working with us now. So, we’re actually expecting a very large substantial expansion program in 2022.” c
