Bales of pink post-industrial textile waste sit in a warehouse in the north of Barcelona, Spain, ready to be sorted, spun, and woven into new material.
Image by Madeleine Brunnmeier
Unwoven is an editorial project by the non-profit organization Textile Exchange. It aims to pull apart and reconstruct perceptions of clothing and textiles today by deepening our understanding of the materials that make them, and the stories, questions, and concepts behind them.
Often seen the starting point for further creative development, this second edition reframes raw materials as the culmination of years of dedication and know-how instead. From herders who have honed their ability to care for animals through changing seasons, to growers with an unmatched understanding of the soil that sustains them, to innovators redefining what happens to textile waste — this issue tells their stories. At its heart are three essential actions that shape the future of sustainable material production: caring for land and livestock, cultivating crops, and converting the old into new.
The Growers Behind South Africa’s Responsible Mohair
BRAZIL
The Brazilian Smallholders Safeguarding Nature
TÜRKIYE
Regenerating Soil in the Büyük Menderes River Basin
BENIN
Empowering Communities through Organic Farming
PERU & INDIA
Connecting Textiles, Nature, and Culture with Magnum Photos
SPAIN
The
TÜRKIYE
Regenerating Soil in the Büyük Menderes River Basin
SPAIN The Spanish Supply Chain Recycling Old Clothes into New Ones
Care
This chapter centers the deep, generational knowledge required to care for the land and livestock that form the foundation of more responsible material production. It’s a space for the stories of growers and herders who have honed their ability to nurture their crops, animals, and surrounding ecosystems through changing climates. They demonstrate how care is the essential first step toward long-term environmental balance, placing the land and all it sustains at the heart of their practices, in turn preserving nature and promoting biodiversity.
In Tasmania, one fourth-generation merino wool farmer is interweaving agriculture with ecology. Julian von Bibra, whose family has tended to the same land for generations, embodies a growing movement among growers who recognize that preserving what’s left of their land’s natural heritage — from safeguarding precious native grasslands to monitoring threatened animal species — will be integral to ensuring a resilient future for generations to come.
Farming and Conservation Go Hand in Hand in Tasmania
TASMANIA, AUSTRALIA
Words by Whitney Bauck
Images by Kin Chan Coedel
Julian von Bibra’s family has been farming the same land in Tasmania, an island off the southern tip of Australia, for four generations. Von Bibra grew up watching his parents raise sheep on the land, and though they never pressured him to follow in their footsteps, he felt an “enormous sense of connection to our community, to our land and to growing merino wool.”
It was that sense of connection that spurred him to start looking for ways to turn the farm, called Beaufront, in an increasingly ecologically-minded direction.
Though von Bibra feels proud of his farming business, which includes grains, pharmaceutical poppies and cattle alongside a flock of Responsible Wool Standard certified merino sheep, he’s also honest about the ways that the introduction of European agriculture has wreaked havoc on people and landscapes in Tasmanian history.
In addition to settlers’ “very dark past” of violence against Aboriginal Tasmanians, their approach to farming over the last 200 years has altered local landscapes by clearing trees, introducing fertilizer, replacing native grasslands with perennial non-native grasses, overgrazing the land and fragmenting crucial habitat.
But von Bibra believes that the power that today’s farmers yield on the land can be channeled into practices that are not just less harmful, but actively helpful in protecting biodiversity in Tasmania today.
“There are areas of these native grasslands that still exist, and so they become very precious,” he explains on the phone one cool June morning. “They’re [almost] all privately held, which means farmers in our region have a role in ensuring that we don’t lose them.”
Von Bibra is trying to take that responsibility seriously on his own land and encourage his neighbors to do the same: He and his wife Annabel have put 40 percent of their property into some form of reserve.
“We need to take responsibility as land managers, not just for our annual profitability, but in making sure we don’t erode our natural capital,” he says. “It’s that juggle between running an agricultural business, and not losing all our biodiversity, as this wealth of native grasslands is unique and needs protecting. Getting that balance right is a real challenge.”
To help tackle that challenge, von Bibra has enlisted the help of a handful of local community, non-profit and university partners. The farm has experienced “small wins” in the form of partnering with local Aboriginal community groups to re-introduce cultural burning onto parts of the land, though von Bibra notes that it’s a “work in progress.”
“I think the early shepherds used to try and mimic Indigenous practices and probably got it wrong. We’re picking up the pieces of a culture that is not well documented or understood, and trying to adapt modern farming techniques around that,” he says. “There’s been a lot of loss, a lot of hardship and a lot of pain. We have to firstly acknowledge that, and then respect the existing members of the community and try to re-engage with them — it’s a delicate task.”
One of the most significant partnerships on the land is a program called the Midlands Conservation Partnership (MCP), a project of the non-profit Tasmanian Land Conservancy. The MCP works with farm owners in the area to protect and manage critically endangered native grasslands and increase biodiversity.
Manager of the program Pierre Defourny explains that many of these grasslands actually benefit from moderate grazing, having co-evolved with native grazing marsupials like kangaroos and wallabies, which makes working with sheep farmers a natural fit. “These grasslands do need some kind of disturbance; you can’t really just set them aside and forget them,” he explains.
Left: Julian von Bibra stencils onto a finished bale of freshly sheared, Responsible Wool Standard certified merino wool.
Above: Following the shearing, the merino wool is packaged into bales ready to begin its journey from Beaufront farm to its final buyer. It’s the product of practices designed to care for both land and livestock.
On Beaufront, 750 hectares are currently under a conservation agreement with the MCP. It comes with certain restrictions about how the farmers manage the allotment — they can’t clear or fertilize it, and they’re obliged to treat and control weeds — but other than that, the agreement is mostly outcomes-driven, giving the land managers a fair bit of choice and agency.
There are four key outcomes that Defourny and his colleagues look for to indicate that a farmer is managing a native grassland responsibly. The first is to see that the number of threatened animal species is being maintained or increasing — a crucial factor on an island like Tasmania, known as the home of species like the Tasmanian devil, which live nowhere else in the world. The second is for the diversity and cover of native plant species to remain stable or increase, while the third looks for the diversity and spread of introduced species to decrease. And finally, the MCP asks that every farmer it partners with report to the project about how they’ve approached management on the land.
Different farmers get involved for different reasons: smaller farmers might be drawn in by the financial incentives the MCP offers participants, while larger farmholders might be more interested in having a compelling sustainability story to tell their customers. For other farmers, Defourny theorizes, it’s just good old fashioned peer pressure — with a positive spin — at play.
“It’s not just a conservation program. What we are really trying to do is create a community of farmers who are interested in conservation, and who care about it. We are trying to change a social norm in the region,” Defourny explains. Von Bibra and two of his neighbors who have long been influential landowners in the community, and who were already more “conservationminded” before the program started, he adds, helped “convince other farmers to join the program throughout the years.”
“What we are trying to do is create a community of farmers who are interested in conservation, and who care about it. We are trying to change a social norm.”
The more neighbors involved, the better: Landscapes don’t stop and start where property lines begin and end, so being able to work together with neighboring farmers to create unbroken conservation areas helps create wildlife corridors that are crucial for endemic species’ survival.
And if the Von Bibra’s neighbors’ are looking for more inspiration on how to prioritize the sustainability of the landscape without sacrificing their ability to run a working farm, there’s plenty more where that came from. The pair have also carefully monitored the size of their sheep herd in drought years to make sure that the animals don’t overburden the land with excessive grazing, planted shelterbelts to reduce wind erosion and provide more wildlife habitat, and partnered with a nearby university and WWF Australia to monitor a population of Eastern quolls, a species of adorable spotted marsupials.
Von Bibra’s convinced that not only is working toward conservation the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do for any farmer that still wants their land to be viable for the next 200 years as climate change, market pressures and extreme weather continue to throw new challenges their way. “The world is changing, and we need to be adaptive and prepared to move with it,” he says.
Left: Beaufront farm is making a new name for Tasmanian wool, placing the conservation of native species at the heart of its mission.
“The world is changing, and we need to be adaptive and prepared to move with it.”
Above: “The Sheep, Their Diseases, and How to Cure Them” by George S. Heatley, the author of multiple books on caring for domestic and farm animals published in the late 19th century.
EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA
Whether they inherited hundred-year-old family farms or are just getting started, many South African farmers are undertaking the laborious process of raising angora goats in a way that prioritizes both their welfare and the health of the land.
The Growers Behind South Africa’s Responsible Mohair
“Goats need to be cared for far more than sheep.”
When non-farmers picture what it’s like to raise mohair goats, what comes to mind might be an idyllic picture of cuddly-looking angora goat kids grazing in a pasture. But what they might not realize is that behind those sweet and inquisitive faces is a whole lot of work.
“Goats need to be cared for far more than sheep,” says Brett Walker. “They spend a lot of their time creeping out of their paddocks.” Walker is a seventh-generation farmer in the semi-desert Karoo region of South Africa who raises both sheep and their more difficult angora goat counterparts.
In addition to being more prone to wandering off, the goats’ long, luxurious hair needs to be cared for (and sometimes gets caught on things they need help being freed from), they need to be sheared twice a year, and they are less responsible parents than their sheep peers, making kidding season a time of constant vigilance for farmers. The goats are also more susceptible to cold and abrupt weather changes, which can mean that if it starts raining unexpectedly in the middle of the night, farmers may find themselves jumping out of bed to guide their animals into sheds or other shelters.
Even though they’re a lot of work, Walker derives a sense of joy from seeing the beautiful fiber the goats produce in shearing season. And he’s just one of a generation of producers trying to right the wrongs of his ancestors by raising these animals differently to those who came before him.
Words by Whitney Bauck
Images by Carl van der Linde
“There was a wool boom in the 1950s. The farmers put as many sheep onto the land as possible. There was this massive overpopulation of sheep, and they ground the land to dust because the wool was worth so much money,” he explains. “That had a massively negative effect on the whole area. So we found a lot of runoff and erosion.” A similar mohair boom happened in the 1990s, and the cycle repeated itself, leaving behind degraded pasture, or veld, in its wake.
It’s this kind of impact that Walker and others like him are trying to remediate by utilizing rotational grazing practices popularized by the likes of Alan Savory to try and regenerate vegetation while still working with animals on the land, which is too dry for many other kinds of farming.
Though there are a suite of practices involved in this kind of holistic management, the most fundamental is allowing the animals to stay on an area of pasture for a limited amount of time before moving the flock along, so that they feed thoroughly on the vegetation without completely decimating it.
Caring for the plant life on the farm is good for local biodiversity, but it’s also in the farmer’s own best self-interest: “We need to look after our pasture, because in the end, we don't buy any supplemental feed,” Lotter says.
Trenly Spence, whose family has been farming angora goats on the same plot of land for more than a century, is motivated to do the same in part because he’s seen how bad things can get when farmers don’t take that approach. “The vegetation was in a terrible, terrible state when I started farming — not because my ancestors were purposely trying to do that; it was just ignorance.”
Inheriting land that was in such bad shape is part of what turned Spence into someone whose “true passion is the regeneration of our veld,” he says. Spence got started on the path toward holistic management in the ‘90s by taking note of the farmers in his community whose land seemed healthier than his family’s own, and asking them what they were doing differently.
One of his main takeaways was that “overgrazing is caused by time, and not the amount of animals.” He believes that the right kind of management can actually increase the carrying capacity of the land while simultaneously taking care of it: Rotational grazing allowed him to regenerate the vegetation on his land so thoroughly that he’s now able to run seven times more animals on his land than he could 30 years ago.
“Overgrazing is caused by time, and not the amount of animals.”
Left:
Angora goats browse on naturally occurring Karoo shrubs and grasses on Ordonnantie Farm. When managed well, fiber production can support the functioning of natural ecosystems.
Above: One of the many aloe species that are scattered across the Eastern Cape landscape — a symbol of the province's unique biodiversity.
It’s also made his land far more resilient to the floods that happen when the semi-arid region receives unexpected heavy rain. Soil that’s filled with living roots is far more able to absorb sudden influxes of water, and is less susceptible to erosion.
“We had eight inches [of rain] one weekend, and I didn’t have a single stream on my farm running with water. Everybody else [nearby] had flood damage, their goats were drowning in rivers and streams, and I had no runoff,” Spence says. That proof that his regeneration attempts were working “was probably the highlight of my farming career — realizing it is achievable to recover the vegetation,” he says.
South Africa’s history of government-sanctioned racism and apartheid means that almost all of the country’s land-owning families are white. But there are people looking to lower barriers to entry so that Black farmers can also get involved in the mohair industry. Beauty Mokgwamme, who heads up the Mohair Empowerment Trust, a group founded by the local industry to help make inroads for disadvantaged farmers, is one of them.
“The breed itself is profitable because you shear them twice a year, and the hair price is double or triple what you can get for other breeds in South Africa,” she says. “But you must be able to love and commit yourself, because there’s a lot of work needed to look after them.” In her role, she seeks out farmers who have land and farming infrastructure that are suitable for angora goats. Once she’s identified farmers who might be a good fit, the trust offers them interest-free loans to buy goats, which are paid back over time through the profits from the shearing.
The trust also supports these emerging farmers through classes that teach them about everything from rotational grazing to how to prepare the mohair for market after it has been sheared. In addition, Mokgwamme and her team offer education on how to keep records and do the paperwork necessary to comply with the Responsible Mohair Standard, which serves as a benchmark for best practices as well as allowing farmers to communicate to buyers the kinds of responsible practices they’re committed to.
Taking on this approach to management that centers the wellbeing of the animals, the land, and the people who work with them can have positive impacts, but it takes time. Though the increased carrying capacity on his land has convinced him that there’s a financial case to be made for holistic management, Spence warns that it’s no quick fix: “An environment that has been messed up or mismanaged for two or three hundred years, you can’t change it in 20 years. I’m happy with what I’ve achieved in 30 years, but there’s still a long way to go.”
Even so, he’s grateful to be a part of the industry. “Mohair’s stunning. It’s a very nice product to work with. And even farming with it is amazing,” he says. “But like all good things in life, it takes a lot of work and effort.”
Right: This “Mohair Country” sign, found along the road from Graaff-Reinet to Pearston, is one of many across the region, highlighting the importance of mohair production in the landscape.
PARÁ AND CEARÁ,
BRAZIL
Meet the Brazilian smallholder farmers documented in Textile Exchange’s short feature film “Now we Live in Paradise” — each of whom lives on the land they farm and is committed to protecting the ecosystems they inhabit, often restoring once-degraded land in the process.
The landscape changes dramatically over the 1200 kilometers that stretch between the densely green, dusty town of Novo Repartimento, sitting in the Trans-Amazonian area in Brazil’s Pará state, and the verdant, rocky hills of Quixadá and Nova Russas in the country’s North East. Yet despite their distinct environments, both regions are home to communities of smallholder farmers with an innate understanding of the natural value in the places they call home.
On the edge of the Amazon, local farmers graze cattle that will one day become leather — careful not to clear the forest. Instead, they enhance their income by cultivating açaí and cocao trees with guidance from the Solidaridad organization’s RestaurAmazônia project. In the North Eastern state of Ceará, cotton used for clothing is grown in agroecological systems alongside food crops like corn and sesame, a practice supported by soil technicians from the non-profit Esplar.
The stories of five smallholder farmers taking part in these projects are documented in Textile Exchange’s latest short film, which gets its name from the words of featured cotton grower João Félix de Souza: "Hoje eu moro no paraíso — Now I live in paradise." The film illustrates how agricultural practices used to produce land-based materials can enhance biodiversity and support livelihoods. It hopes that the care these farmers have over their land serves as a call to action to the fashion and textile industry to support farmers and help look after the planet we share as our common home — as well as to show how generously the land gives back to us when we do.
The Brazilian Smallholders Safeguarding Nature
Words by Beatrice Murray-Nag
“Hoje eu moro no paraíso — Now I live in paradise.”
Images by Danilo Arenas and Sabrina Duarte
MARIA ALCY PERREIRA DOS SANTOS
“I don’t know where agroecology begins and ends, but it’s everything that surrounds me now.”
It’s easy to perceive Maria Alcy Perreira dos Santos’ innate connection to the land she lives on. She was raised on this same farm in the Quixadá municipality in Ceará, which used to be owned by her father. But the view from her family house, nestled behind the small fields, hasn’t always looked how it does today.
Having purchased a small plot of the land from her father, Santos set out to rebuild the health of the overworked soil to ensure it can continue to serve her and her children for years to come. “I started taking care of the land, cleaning out other people’s cattle pens and collecting manure. I would gather it up, bring it here, and spread it on the soil. Everyone said I was going crazy, but I decided not to clear any more land.”
Today, she grows cotton in an agroecological system alongside corn and sesame plants, interspersed with cashew trees. Acerola, bananas, umbu-cajá, graviola, lemons, mango, mulberries, papayas, soursop and tangerines are just some of the crops she rotates, nourishing the soil and providing food for her family.
Technicians from Esplar, a local NGO providing support to farmers, have helped Santos expand her understanding of agroecological practices. But nothing defines her approach to growing more than her deep-seated respect for nature. “I don’t know where agroecology begins and ends, but it’s everything that surrounds me now,” she summarizes neatly.
And her efforts are being rewarded. “I didn’t hear a single bird when I first arrived here because everything had been cleared. The forest was so weak,” she recalls. “But now, when you wake up in the morning, you wake up to the birds singing.”
Right: Maria Alcy Perreira dos Santos’ cotton shares a field with corn, sesame, and cashew trees, each plant offering its own properties to the soil.
VALDEMIRO BROECH
When coffee farmer Valdemiro Broech left his home near what is now the city of Linhares, Espírito Santo, he didn’t feel like he had much choice. It was 1989, and the destruction of the surrounding forest was affecting the climate, his harvests, and his ability to provide for his family. “When we got there, it was all forest. It rained a lot, and we harvested everything we planted. But when we left, the destruction of nature, of the forest, of the climate was already completely out of control. We planted things and didn't harvest anything.”
His journey took him to Novo Repartimento, a remote town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Pará. Finding himself unable to acquire land due to the political situation, Broech worked as a farm laborer before moving to the rural settlement of Tuerê. It is now home to over 3000 settler families, many of whom — like himself — came in search of opportunity.
“We have a larger piece of forest in the middle of the property, and we are conscious that we have to preserve it; we can't destroy it, can't cut it down.”
“When we arrived here, we thought about finding land that was preferably pure forest and had good water,” he recalls. “We found this piece of land with good water and forest, and I said to myself, this is where we will stay.”
Broech’s holding hums with birds and insects, a verdant canopy including his own cocoa and açaí trees, which he learned to cultivate with help from the Brazil division of the Solidaridad organization and its RestaurAmazônia program. When grazing his cattle, he does so in the knowledge that he cannot convert forest to pasture like many others around him have done.
“Those who have some forest left around here are us, our family,” he explains. “We have a larger piece of forest in the middle of the property, and we are conscious that we have to preserve it; we can't destroy it, can't cut it down.”
Right: Previously a coffee farmer, Valdemiro Broech now has cocoa and açaí trees, alongside his small herd of cattle.
VANUSA INÁCIO DE CARVALHO
Vanusa Inácio de Carvalho is one of twelve women in the community village of Irapuá, in Nova Russas who have joined forces to farm using agroecological methods in their backyards. Together, the self-named Abelhas Lutadoras do Sertão (the Fighting Bees of the Sertão) grow beans, corn, sesame, pumpkin, and peanuts — and have now added cotton to their portfolio.
According to Carvalho, before the women began planting cotton, much of the land was planted with monocultures — just corn, or corn with beans. Today, intercropping cotton with a diverse range of crops is in turn adding more value to the consortium and building back soil health too.
The fact that this cotton is now used in clothing and shoes sold globally is a source of pride for the group.
“It’s enjoyable and fulfilling to go to the field and know that what’s there was made by you, to be able to harvest the cotton,” Carvalho smiles. “We don’t realize it, but we are going beyond what we think we can do because we are producing [the cotton] in our backyard, and it goes out into the world.”
She hopes that those sourcing the fibers and buying the final products take the time to think about who grew it, and the innate respect for nature that agroecological farming requires.
“People should be aware and value not just the beautiful piece of clothing that’s already ready, but the hard work that starts with the men and women in the fields. It’s not just about seeing the finished product but understanding the effort behind it.”
“People should be aware and value not just the beautiful piece of clothing that’s already ready, but the hard work that starts with the men and women in the fields.”
Right: Part of a female group of farmers, Vanusa Inácio de Carvalho is proud that the cotton grown using agroecological practices in her backyard can now be found in products across the world.
EDILSON JOSÉ PEDRO
Edilson José Pedro has always been enthusiastic about optimizing processes on his farm. He was quick to understand that rotating diverse grass types for cattle to graze on, along with cocoa, açaí, and lemon trees makes perfect business sense — while protecting the health of his land at the same time.
“We have a serious monoculture problem here in the state of Pará. And when you practice monoculture, when a disease comes, it affects the entire crop,” he explains.
His nuanced understanding of his own land has helped him harness the diverse qualities its different areas offer. He’s learned where to grow panicum grass and where brachiaria thrives instead, and that sometimes, it’s beneficial to mix the two. He even knows that to feed his cattle most efficiently, he must graze them on the right grass at exactly the right time, when its protein levels are naturally at their highest.
Thanks to his involvement with Solidaridad, Pedro is expanding his knowledge of rotational management. “We need to produce according to the area's suitability,” he explains. “Sometimes I want to put cattle in a lowland area where I could produce high-quality açaí. Sometimes someone else wants to plant açaí on a hill where costs will be high because they will need a lot of water and resources.”
Pedro is already keen that this knowledge is passed on, creating a system in which experiences and learnings can be shared helping farmers become stronger financially while taking better care of nature. For him, this is the key to slowing down deforestation in the area.
“We don't need to clear land today. We need to educate people so that we can produce more on already productive land. But to do that, we need awareness. We need to create productive hubs and demonstration schools so people can become aware, copy what is being done, and believe in it.”
“We don't need to clear land today. We need to educate people so that we can produce more on already productive land. But to do that, we need awareness.”
Right: Edilson
Pedro raises Nelore cattle. Often thought of as a wild and aggressive breed, he believes they become docile and easy to manage when cared for correctly.
José
JOÃO FÉLIX DE SOUZA
On João Félix de Souza's land, fruits, vegetables, and cotton are interspersed, growing alongside each other with Edenic appeal. Out of his living room window, a large neem tree provides shade, no doubt strategically planted for its natural pest-deterring properties.
“In my field, there are corn, beans, cotton, angelim, watermelon, cucumber, pumpkin, and grass,” he smiles. “I have other crops planted as well. I have peanuts, rice, and more. There are many things, like green onions, lemons, oranges, coconuts, star fruit…”
But there is plenty of logic behind this eclectic mix — with each crop offering different properties to benefit the whole. “Some crops deplete the soil of everything it has, while others, like beans and legumes, replenish some of the nutrients that the soil needs,” he explains.
Souza’s land wasn’t always home to such a thriving mix of plants. “If you had seen this place 20 years ago, it was completely different — just a small house with four rooms,” he recalls. “None of the trees were here.”
But thanks to all that he has learned, his home has become a sanctuary, not only for nature but for his family too. “Now, we live in paradise,” he smiles, speaking with a sense of pride.
“I believe that our community is one of the best in the world. We’ve learned to understand nature and how to live together as men and women. I always say that our job, our duty, is to pass on to others what we’ve learned so that it benefits the environment in the future.”
“I always say that our job, our duty, is to pass on to others what we’ve learned so that it benefits the environment in the future.”
Left: João Félix de Souza proudly holds a plate of produce grown on his land, including star fruit, lemon, banana, beans, corn, and cotton.
Cultivate
Cultivation is more than just growing crops; it’s about understanding and respecting the soil that sustains us. This chapter highlights the expertise of farmers who sow and harvest the raw materials for fashion and textiles, from cotton to natural indigo. Their stories situate these plants within their wider social and environmental ecosystems, taking them out of the context of clothing and reframing them as essential components of cultures and food systems, as well as powerful tools for nature preservation and social mobility.
SÖKE PLAIN, TÜRKIYE
In the Büyük Menderes river basin, WWF-Türkiye is tackling the impact of cotton farming on the region’s rich biodiversity. Through collaboration with local farmers, it is piloting regenerative practices that aim to integrate cotton into an agricultural system that restores nature instead of depleting it.
Known to the Ancient Greeks as the Maiandros (Μαίανδρος), Türkiye’s Büyük Menderes river winds its way over 584 kilometers from the Western Anatolia region to the sea on its Aegean coast. It has long been characterized by its leisurely oscillation, so much so that its name Menderes forms the root of the modern English verb “to meander.”
Today, the Büyük Menderes river basin houses a wealth of habitats and biodiversity hotspots. Its delta is an internationally important wetland, where the river meets the sea in an intricate marbling of land and water. Bafa Lake — a former gulf now separated from the sea by sediment — is a haven for visiting birdwatchers and local fishermen alike. Both are home to endangered species including the Dalmatian pelican and European eel.
Regenerating Soil in the Büyük Menderes River Basin
But the river basin is known for more than just nature. Home to a thriving textile industry and over 42 mills, the land around its sweeping curves also represents the second-largest cotton-producing area in the country. Nested between the delta, Bafa Lake, and the Latmos mountains, the cotton fields of the Söke Plain alone support the livelihoods of approximately 30,000 people.
Often, the activities used for cotton cultivation are at odds with the local ecosystem. From blocking the Büyük Menderes’ natural flow to pool resources for flood irrigation, to polluting the lake with the runoff from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, the impacts of industry and agriculture are reflected in its waters.
“To understand the risks of farming, you have to go beyond the farms” explains Eren Atak, the Freshwater Program Manager at WWF-Türkiye, leading its work in the area. Driving through the Söke Plain at harvest season, she points out where some of the problems arise.
Words by Beatrice Murray-Nag
Images by Anass Ouaziz
While trucks and warehouses are brimming with freshly harvested fibers, the fields are brown and bare, their soil dry, cracked, and left exposed to the elements over the winter. On some plots, late blooming bolls still cling to defoliated stems — on others, machinery is already at work to till the soil or flatten out the fields in preparation for the use of flood irrigation.
As part of its program in the Büyük Menderes basin, WWF-Türkiye is setting out to show the textile industry that there is a way to produce cotton that gives back to the local ecosystem instead. One solution comes in the form of two pilot plots of land in the Söke Plain, where it is working alongside local farmers and a team of scientists to grow cotton with increased respect for soil, water, and nature.
The first plot is situated at Söktaş, a farm in the small village of Sazlı where farmers have been trialing regenerative practices for five years and working alongside WWF-Türkiye for three. Here, the cotton fields are set against a mountainous landscape, interrupted only by the silver pipes of the farm’s centerpivot irrigation system. It’s currently being tested as a more water-efficient alternative to flood irrigation and is the first sign of the owners’ willingness to find ways to grow cotton that respect the local resources, rather than depleting them.
“We are the owners of the soil, and this is our responsibility,” explains İrfan Uysal, who manages the plot, where low and no-tillage methods are used and agricultural chemicals are minimized in favor of homemade compost. “We have this resource, and we have to take care of it.”
A few steps into the field further reveal what this looks like in action. The soil is covered under a blanket of mulch, made from a decomposing mix of cover crops like turnip, wheat, pea, and sorghum that protects it from rains and erosion. Grown on the land in the spring before the cotton was planted in their place, each provides it with a unique service, from boosting nitrogen to increasing aeration.
“You can see the biodiversity in the soil — it’s alive,” remarks Uysal, describing the myriad of creatures that have made the mulch their home. “I’ve been farming cotton for 30 years, and this is the first time that I’ve seen earthworms,” he adds, noting how each organism adds value to the soil’s ecosystem and increases its quality.
Other observations hide under the soil’s surface, only to be made when the cotton plants are pulled up to reveal their roots.
“We are the owners of the soil, and this is our responsibility.”
“Here, even the şeytan yolu is starting to become fertile.”
“When the root of the plant grows vertically down, it means the soil is more aerated and less compact,” explains Dr Erdem Aykas, a professor at Ege University’s Faculty of Agriculture specialized in farm machinery, and consultant on the pilot. He checks several, and — accepting that achieving the results he wants will take time — sets the specimens and their still slightly unruly roots back down.
Lessons from the land are backed up with data from the lab, where the team closely monitors indicators like soil carbon levels, soil organic matter, aggregate stability, salinity, water holding capacity, and irrigation water efficiency, among many others.
This data is tracked alongside the farmers’ observations in a holistic monitoring approach where worm count — which has increased from zero to 100 per square meter by 10 centimeters of soil in the last two years — is just as important as outcomes like soil pH and porosity.
This careful balance of farm know-how with science and academic expertise helps optimize the practices that are used on the ground. Take the process of growing the cover crops and leaving them on the fields as mulch. To improve how this is done, Dr Aykas led the development of specialized roller crimper machinery, designed to fold the cover crops over before cotton planting begins, allowing them to remain on top of the soil. This process is followed by another no-till farm machine he developed, that cuts open the organic matter and sets the cotton seeds in place.
A similar system of testing and optimizing has been applied to making and applying the compost. “We started by using the recipe from the Soil Food Web School,” explains Iraz Candas, the project’s soil microbiology consultant. “Then we designed and tested a system to apply it that won’t kill the biology in the compost.”
While the team might have landed on local recipes for success, one thing they know for certain is that no plot of land is the same. Methods must be tested in multiple locations on different types of soil, and adapted to the context in which they are used. The second pilot plot is situated by the sea near the village of Tuzburgazı, offering the team the opportunity to trial their learnings on saline soil with a low organic matter content. It is part of Tanmanlar Agricultural Enterprise — a three-generation family that first got involved with WWF-Türkiye through its work with Better Cotton.
Here, the saltiness of the soil initially proved a challenge for the farmers. “The yields decreased for the first couple of years, at the beginning of our learning process,” recalls Fuat Tanman, who runs the farm as well as sitting as the chair of IPUD, Better Cotton’s strategic partner in Türkiye. “And so you have to be prepared for that.”
Despite the initial difficulties, Tanman persevered with the cover crops and compost recipes optimized with help from WWF-Türkiye and its consultants. Now the pilot is in its third year, and signs of success have started to show. “Usually in this area, the soil organic matter is below one percent,” he explains. “Here, it was 0.8 percent. But since we’ve been trialing the regenerative practices over the past three years, we have seen it rise to one percent.”
These subtle changes can be observed in the day-to-day management of the farm as well. Metin Samkose, one of the workers who manage the regenerative plot, illustrates the beneficial impacts on the land that he is observing through the concept of “şeytan yolu” or devil’s path — a term used among local cotton farmers to refer to strips of land in which the soil is so depleted that nothing can be grown. “Here, even the şeytan yolu is starting to become fertile,” he explains with surprise, as dragonflies circle the lush green field in which he is standing.
Like Söktaş, Tanmanlar Agricultural Enterprise is big enough to be able to dedicate specific plots to trialing these methods and observing the results, taking the financial risk of a learning-from-doing approach. But decreases in yield are a steep price to pay for soil health, and one that they recognize smallholder farmers cannot shoulder.
Above: İrfan Uysal stands in front of the cotton plot he manages on Söktaş farm in the village of Sazlı, which is used to pilot regenerative practices.
“I would like us to be able to inspire other farmers, but it’s so important that smallholders have financial support because while everyone’s soil is different, not everyone can allocate land just to try and test things,” adds Samkose.
Uysal at Söktaş shares a similar sentiment: “We are working with academics, and we are observing the results. We see that this is the right direction, but we’re trying to find the right way to move this journey forward.” He too notes that finance will be key, and that government subsidies for regenerative practices could help.
This is important to WWF International’s vision for the long-term outcomes of its work in Türkiye. The project is part of its global mission to lead the adoption and implementation of water stewardship in the textile sector, and it is running water stewardship programs in countries like China, India, and Vietnam too. With the support of brands and local partners, it hopes that the efforts to test regenerative practices at pilot scale in the Söke region will help to influence policy development around financial support for interested farmers in Türkiye.
To set this in motion, WWF-Türkiye is beginning to diffuse the pilot learnings through a video series for farmers. Currently available on YouTube in Turkish, with English on its way, the series includes everything from compost recipes to simple on-farm soil tests. Beyond the farm gate, the team has facilitated the formation of the Söke Cotton Water Stewardship Committee, which aims to address the wider water problems in the area, and designed another pilot project, this time using modern irrigation systems.
Ultimately, an ecosystem like the Büyük Menderes basin requires a landscape-level approach, and the project’s success will depend on its ability to help inspire and educate others in the region to farm with increased respect for the resources around them. But as climate change threatens the resilience of conventional farming practices in the future, with increasing droughts and unpredictable weather, it almost feels like a shift in the system could be inevitable.
While the hope is that WWF-Türkiye’s pilots will pique local cotton farmers’ interest, encouraging peer-to-peer learning and community building, the team knows that it will take time, and most importantly — investment from the industry that uses the materials they produce “When we as farmers think about what we can do in the face of climate change, one of the key things is to implement these kinds of agricultural practices that help to protect the local ecosystem” summarizes Tanman. “But we do need a financial safety net in which to do so.”
Right: A farm worker has his portrait taken in a warehouse full of freshly harvested cotton at Tanmanlar Agricultural Enterprise near the village of Tuzburgazı.
Local cotton farmers in Benin are transforming their communities through organic and gender-inclusive farming practices, rotating crops for consumption with cotton for sale under the guidance and support of OBEPAB (Beninese Organization for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture) and PAN UK (Pesticide Action Network UK).
Empowering Communities through Organic Farming
AKLAMPA, BENIN
Words by Beatrice Murray-Nag
Images by Lindokuhle Sobekwa
It’s February in the town of Glazoué in Benin’s central Aklampa district, and harvest season is nearing its end. The sun is high in the sky, and local smallholder farmers are busy weighing their yields. The community is gathered around a tall mound of soft white cotton, which is slowly packed into large wicker baskets and placed on the scales.
Among the group are Paul Leode and Elisabeth Degbohoue.
The pair have been farming their own plots of land organically since 2007 and 2009 respectively, growing cotton in rotation with pigeon peas, peanuts, sesame and manioc, also known as cassava. They keep what they need to feed their family and sell the rest at the market.
Leode and Degbohoue are two of around eight thousand farmers working with the Beninese Organization for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture (OBEPAB), which trains local farmers in organic farming and promotes gender inclusivity. Now, they are safe in the knowledge that the soil that sustains them and their seven children — through both food crops and cotton — is free from chemical inputs.
“The switch to organic farming practices has enabled my family and I to feel better about our health and to improve the condition of our soils,” Leode shares, speaking to the holistic benefits that come with rotating cash crops with food to eat and reducing exposure to hazardous pesticides. “Thanks to organic cotton production, I’m able to rotate and combine food crops with growing products to sell without having to worry about contamination. As a result, I no longer need to go to the market to buy food products, because I produce enough to meet my family’s needs.”
“Producing organic cotton is a change of behavior that has never been easy,” he adds, “but with the conviction and the spirit of protecting health and the environment, I have had the courage and the will to overcome the use of chemical inputs.”
When Leode and Degbohoue first decided to participate in the training, they wanted to move away from conventional agricultural chemicals, complaining of skin irritation, dizziness and coughing from contact with chemical pesticides. They had also observed
a drop in soil fertility from the prolonged usage of chemical fertilizers, spurring their search for alternative options.
Now, the couple have learned how to use trap crops like okra and bissap — also known as hibiscus — and biopesticides made from ground neem seeds to deter pests on their land. They stay on top of regular weeding to keep their fields clean, replace fertlizers with compost and palm kernel cake, and graze cattle on their plots between rotations.
While cotton supports the livelihoods of half the population in Benin, these methods were long seen as going against the grain, and women were left out of the conversation. Recognizing the value that an alternative approach to agriculture could bring to local communities, local agronomist Professor Simplice Davo Vodouhe started OBEPAB in 1996 to begin training farmers in an organic, inclusive model, with support from Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK).
“We started with cotton, because that is the main crop in Benin that uses pesticides, and with a group of just 17 farmers,” Professor Vodouhe shares. This hands-on approach, based on the Farmer Field School (FFS) model, has since put the learning in the hands of farmers while also understanding and addressing their needs — setting them up for long-term resiliency and independence.
“In a Farmer Field School we host a group of about 25 farmers regularly throughout the season on a “learning plot” where they trial different practices and observe the results for themselves,” adds Rajan Bhopal, International Project Manager at PAN UK. “With this approach,
“The switch to organic farming practices has enabled my family and I to feel better about our health and to improve the condition of our soils.”
farmers rapidly adopt organic agriculture.” Today, OBEPAB supports more than five thousand certified organic farmers and three thousand farmers in conversion to organic.
Alongside training farmers in organic practices, OBEPAB and PAN UK are committed to cultivating gender parity from the ground up. Degbohoue’s own success speaks to the value of this approach. She now manages an area of land twice as big as the one she started out with. What’s more, women make up 30 percent of the local organic farmers participating in the project, which is three times as many as for conventional cotton in the area.
This shift would not have been possible without expanding community perceptions around what women can do. “Thanks to the production of organic cotton and the support I get from OBEPAB, my husband has given me good land for my own production,” Degbohoue explains speaking to the success of one of its less conventionally named focus groups: the School for Husbands.
“In the beginning, when men had finished using their land, they’d leave it to their wives to crop,’ explains Professor Vodouhe. “This meant that women were left with poor land with very low yields. So, we needed men to give better land to their wives.”
OBEPAB went on to organize a workshop to help men and women discuss how to improve the situation, educating men to ensure women are given fertile land. And starting out with better soil became a significant step towards their financial independence.
“With better land and improved yield, women were able to get direct revenue from people who buy their products,” Vodouhe continues. “This also improved the overall situation of their households, as it meant they could invest money to help their children go to school.”
For Degbohoue, having access to better land has led to better yields, increased revenue, and financial independence. “I first work in my own field before helping my husband in his,” she notes. “What’s more, my husband no longer has much say in how I manage my income.”
Above: In the town of Glazoué in Benin’s central Aklampa district, cotton is moved from fields to a central village point for weighing before being piled onto trucks.
Together with OBEPAB and PAN UK, the local farmers have shown that it is not only possible to avoid the use of pesticides and chemical inputs, but that doing so paves the way for financial freedom.
For the around five thousand farms that are now certified organic, yields are maintained in line with conventional cotton but reduced production costs and a premium price for organic have led to significantly increased profit and greater resilience. In addition, with intercropping and rotation farming techniques, farmers are creating new revenue streams while continually nourishing their soil.
“[Organic farming] has enabled me to improve our income through a 20 percent premium on top of the conventional price,” Leode shares, speaking to the premium that AIC — the National Interprofessional Cotton Association — pays for organic. “Through my income, it has enabled me to send my children to school.”
Yet despite the successes seen, OBEPAB relies on donors to fund its programs and is keen to attract funding from the private buyers of organic cotton to help cover the costs of training and certification, and support more farmers to convert to organic. Better purchasing practices, such as longer-term commitments would lend more stability to farmers and provide increased assurance for Benin’s fast-growing organic cotton sector.
Establishing the long-term resilience of Benin’s thriving organic cotton sector will be key to making sure any funds from the successes seen so far are invested back into the community. And this is how Degbohoue envisages her earnings being used, along with those of other women who are inspired to join her on the journey.
“By spreading and adopting organic farming on a massive scale, we will be able to build social and community infrastructure in our locality such as wells, shops, and small means of transport to local markets,” she summarizes. “I also hope that spreading the benefits of organic farming will help to protect our environment.”
“By spreading and adopting organic farming on a massive scale, we will be able to build social and community infrastructure in our locality.”
Textile Exchange’s annual photography competition in collaboration with the world-renowned photography agency Magnum Photos invites emerging photographers to explore the visual stories behind the materials in clothing and textiles. This year, its third edition saw 356 photographers from 64 countries submit over 6,000 photographs exploring how they transform people, places, cultures, and nature.
Chosen by a panel of expert judges, the two winning projects look at the impact of climate change and globalization on traditional practices, both featuring plants that were once used to create textiles and are now extinct or endangered. Overall winner Alejandra Orosco shares the story of the women seeking to bring back natural indigo to the town of Chinchero, Peru, while runner-up Priyadarshini Ravichandra highlights the disappearance of indigenous desi cotton varieties in the village of Wardha, India.
The two projects document the efforts of communities striving to revive their cultural heritage while adapting to evolving economic and environmental conditions. As both artisans and farmers navigate new pressures, their journeys offer a deeper understanding of the intersection between nature and culture that once defined localized textile production systems.
Judged by Claire Bergkamp (CEO, Textile Exchange)
Jérôme Sessini (Magnum Photographer)
Zied Ben Romdhane (Magnum Photographer)
Sonia Jeunet (Education Director, Magnum Photos)
Joi Lee (Head of Editorial & Executive Producer, Earthrise)
William Simeone (Partnerships Manager, Magnum Photos)
Sophia Li (Journalist, Climate Advocate, Public Speaker, and UN Human Rights Champion)
Connecting Textiles, Nature, and Culture with Magnum Photos
PRIYADARSHINI RAVICHANDRAN RUNNER UP
Based in Cusco, Peru, Alejandra Orosco’s work explores the intersection of identity, colonization, and untold stories. Her photographs transcend language barriers, encouraging viewers to appreciate distant realities while finding common ground with their own. Orosco co-directs Maleza, an arts center in the Sacred Valley, and has participated in the documentary photography program at the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSa) in Oaxaca, the SMArt residency by the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions (FDDM) in Switzerland, and most recently, the photojournalism seminar at the VII Academy. She also received a grant from National Geographic to further develop her work.
Born in Tamil Nadu, India, Priyadarshini Ravichandran is a documentary photographer and artist whose work explores the themes that emerge from relationships that root, reveal, or unsettle her. Her storytelling focuses on women, their lives, and the land, guided by poetics and interconnectivity. An alumna of the South Asia Incubator program at Photo Kathmandu, she has also participated in workshops at the Angkor Photo Festival in Cambodia and the International Center of Photography in New York. She is a recipient of the Parasol Prize from the V&A Museum, and her work has been exhibited at the Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts in Goa and at Peckham 24 in London.
ALEJANDRA OROSCO WINNER
SUEÑO EN AZUL
Alejandra Orosco’s winning project visually explores the possible impact of climate change and colonization on Andean textile culture through the lens of the indigo blue plant, used in the traditional textiles of Chinchero — a pre-Inca town renowned for its rich textile heritage. Indigo was present in archaeological finds in Peru dating back six thousand years, but has now vanished from the country, and the color once used by pre-Hispanic cultures is now imported from the Global North by Indigenous communities seeking to continue their textile tradition. As tourism transforms the local economy, women in artisan cooperatives must adapt to environmental and economic pressures to satisfy tourists seeking these crafts as souvenirs. They are now on a journey to sustainably revive indigo cultivation, aiming to grow the plant on their land once again. This story accompanies their journey of expectations, dreams, and the anxiety that maintaining a tradition implies, even when it is no longer part of one's reality.
THE COTTON OF WARDHA
In her photography series, Priyadarshini Ravichandran documents Wardha, a village in the heart of India that holds historical significance as Mahatma Gandhi's adopted home. Here, cotton cultivation was once a political act, symbolizing the struggle for freedom from colonial rule. Gandhi envisioned a decentralized future, promoting hand-spun Indigenous desi cotton to uplift farmers and households while respecting the earth's resources. However, today Wardha reflects the harsh realities of industrialization and corporate farming, with chemicalintensive cotton monoculture leading to health issues and escalating farmer debt. The decline in the cultivation of indigenous varieties of cotton in favor of genetically modified seeds, and the increasing costs associated with these inputs, have had devastating effects on the farming community. Through her lens, Ravichandran uncovers the remnants of Gandhi's vision, exploring the enduring connection between the people and their land amid loss and sorrow.
Convert
In this chapter, we explore how textile waste is being reimagined and given new life. These stories speak to a new system, in which new value can be created from what already exists. The innovators featured here are leading the way in mechanical and chemical recycling processes, redefining what happens to discarded materials. By converting the old into the new, they offer tangible solutions to close the loop on waste, moving toward a more circular future for fashion and beginning to decouple material production from the extraction of new resources.
The Spanish Supply Chain Recycling Old Clothes into New Ones
BARCELONA, SPAIN
Words by Julia Webster Ayuso
Images by Madeleine Brunnmeier
Amidst towering piles of discarded fashion, Coleo is rewriting the narrative of textile waste. Based in the city of Mataró, near Barcelona, its innovative approach is transforming yesterday’s garments into tomorrow’s trends, scaling the possibilities of textile-to-textile recycling.
In a vast warehouse north of Barcelona, tons of clothes are neatly packed into large cubes, stacked several meters high. Some visibly contain some form of industrial waste, such as hundreds of obsolete bright yellow uniforms. Others reveal what has been discarded by charities: a faded children’s t-shirt, an outdated floral print dress, and dozens of ripped jeans.
Next door, the clothing is dumped into a machine with a long conveyor belt stretching across the vast industrial space. High-tech cameras analyse each garment’s colour and composition in detail, dropping them into one of the dozens of baskets corresponding to different categories. The clothes are then taken to a different facility where they are shredded and spun back into thread.
This automated sorting technology, developed by Wastex, is one of the key tools used by Coleo, a textile manufacturing company based in the city of Mataró, near Barcelona. For the past four years, Coleo has developed a textile-to-textile recycling system to supply major European fashion brands with high-quality recycled garments. The cutting-edge technology uses NIR (Near Infrared Technology) as well as AI to sort garments into up to 72 different categories, processing each in less than a second. This efficiency allows Coleo to process 15,000 tons of clothing annually, with a goal to handle 40,000 tons by 2025.
Europeans throw away seven million tonnes of clothes each year, making circularity one of the biggest challenges facing the fashion industry. Currently, less than one percent of textiles worldwide are recycled into new products. But a new European law coming into effect in January will make textile collection for reuse and recycling compulsory for all member states and require fashion brands and textile producers to pay for the collection and recycling of clothing and footwear.
While Coleo is leading the way in textile-to-textile recycling, this hasn’t always been the case. Founded 12 years ago, the company started out as a traditional supplier for Spanish fast fashion brands, designing and developing garments by sourcing textiles from around the world, until CEO David Puyuelo Huguet decided to completely change the company’s approach. “David has a very strong vision for the future, so he decided we would focus on recycling, which is where
we thought we could bring added value,” says Montse Planas, the company’s Head of Product and Sales who has overseen much of its transition to recycling, which started five years ago. “Ninety percent of what we produce today is recycled, with a high percentage of textile-to-textile content,” she says.
Coleo’s first recycling plant opened in 2020 in Galicia, followed by a second one near Barcelona in 2023. As part of a social inclusion scheme, both plants mainly employ people with learning disabilities, who collect the clothes after machine sorting and remove any nonrecyclable accessories — such as buttons, zips or pockets — before the garments can be shredded. Meanwhile, the team in Mataró comes up with designs made with these recycled materials, which are then sent to be produced in their workshop in Tangier, which employs 460 people.
In Coleo’s open-plan offices in Mataró, designers are huddled together over a pile of sample fabrics, discussing various striped patterns. A team of tailors is working away on samples at their sewing machines, across the floor from their colleagues working on technology development and traceability.
A showroom downstairs displays the finished result: everything from men’s short-sleeve shirts to sheer crop tops and textured cutout
dresses that will end up on high streets across the world. The garments contain a minimum of 20 percent recycled materials, but the company has pushed to increase this and recently reached the 100 percent mark for some garments made entirely of textile-to-textile recycled materials.
“We’ve had to completely change the way we design clothes,” says Gina Carreras, Coleo’s Design Director. “The fabric has become the protagonist, so from a design point of view we need to really understand the types of threads and fabrics we can produce — what their potential is, and where the limitations are.” Those limitations have to do with the thickness, feel and look of the final product. Recycled fibers are shorter than conventional ones, which makes it harder to produce softer, lighter fabrics without adding chemicals. “The finest fabric we have is a bit like poplin, but to make it we’ve had to mix it with another non-recycled thread” Carreras explains. “Given that we mainly use cotton, that also gives the garments a more casual appearance” she says. In line with its approach, Coleo avoids dyeing and instead highlights the natural hues that emerge from the recycling process. Carreras picks up a colour swatch with 13 different yarns, including everything from a bright red and yellow to several dusty pinks, browns, and grays in between.
“These are the colours we can guarantee for our clients,” she explains.
“The fabric has become the protagonist, so from a design point of view we need to really understand the types of threads and fabrics we can produce.”
Above: Bales of post-consumer waste sit in Coleo’s warehouse north of Barcelona, ready to be sorted by its Wastex technology before being shredded and spun back into thread.
“Of course, we can make many more, and the design team is very closely linked to the sorting process, so if we have a lot of blue coming in then we can adapt and make sure we can give an outlet to all that waste.”
Designing with waste in mind, and all of the constraints that come with it, while also adhering to clients’ strict quality demands is a challenge Coleo is ready to take on. “Some clients are more inclined to accept these differences but others are not. We’ve lost many along the way, but gained new ones too,” says Planas. “In any case, we try to work from the perspective of the product. We want to make something that they like and want to buy because it’s beautiful. Something that they can put in their stores without having to give too many explanations.”
In fact, in most cases, the consumer picking up one of Coleo’s garments in a store won’t necessarily know that it’s made from recycled materials. “Companies want to change,” Planas adds, “but they don’t want to compromise on the quality of the final product.”
This means Coleo is constantly pushed to improve and innovate. Through trial and error, the design team has gradually refined its fabric offering to adapt to its clients’ demands and to changing trends. This combined with the machine learning that allows for an increasingly detailed sorting process, the business is getting better at coming up with solutions. The company recently developed a smart container which is currently being tested in various collection locations to facilitate the collection and sorting process for both reuse and recycling.
With new EU regulations putting a larger share of the responsibility on fashion producers to recycle their waste, Coleo’s future is looking bright. Two more recycling plants are currently being built in Spain, with more planned in France, Norway and Germany in the next two years. “We’re a relatively young company, so we’ve been flexible enough to be able to adapt to different needs in this new industry that is being created,” she says. “Developing a business in post-consumer recycling is a long and difficult process, but we’ve already come a long way.”
Above: Textile waste is shredded before being spun into new yarn. Coleo skips the dyeing process, profiting from the natural colors of the original textiles it recycles.
CALIFORNIA,
US INTERVIEW WITH SHAY SETHI
Ambercycle is a materials science company based in Los Angeles and founded in 2015 by scientists Shay Sethi and Moby Ahmed. Driven by the idea that textile recycling technologies were outdated, they sought to develop a process that could separate and regenerate mixed materials at a molecular level. Ambercycle’s first commercially available fiber, known as cycora®, is made from post-consumer and post-industrial waste polyester that has been transformed into a virgin-grade material. Initially focused on technology development, the company is now scaling up and working on a soon-to-be-launched commercial facility.
Fixing Fashion’s Virgin Polyester Problem with Ambercycle
“We aim to make a significant impact on reducing the carbon footprint of garments at the raw materials production stage.”
TE SS Can you briefly explain what molecular regeneration technology is?
TE How does chemical recycling differ from mechanical recycling?
Words
by Morgane Nyfeler
Images by Will Portman for cycora®
SS We have developed a technology designed to separate and purify mixed textile materials at the molecular level, allowing waste materials to be reused as high-quality, virgin-like raw materials. The process is largely scalable and aims to address the massive textile waste problem by creating a circular economy where garments can be continuously regenerated.
Mechanical recycling involves reforming and remolding materials using heat, which can extend the life of the materials and create various functionalities for a material but usually leads to a slight decrease in quality over time. Chemical recycling, on the other hand, processes materials at the molecular level, maintaining their quality and enabling them to be reused
repeatedly without degradation, making it a more sustainable solution for long-term circularity. SS
Why is the focus on polyester important for the fashion, apparel, and textile industry?
SS Polyester is the most widely used raw material, with over 71 million tonnes produced in 2023, and it has the highest carbon footprint among all materials, due to that volume. By starting with polyester as an output material, we aim to make a significant impact on reducing the carbon footprint of garments at the raw materials production stage. Over time, we plan to extend our technology to other materials like spandex and nylon, ultimately providing a sustainable alternative to virgin fossil-based materials in the apparel industry.
How do you manage the logistics of collecting and sorting textile waste for your process?
We work with various partners, including brands and secondhand clothing stores, to source both post-industrial and post-consumer materials. Our goal is to establish a supply chain that allows materials to go through a few cycles of reuse before reaching us for regeneration. We’ve invested significant time in understanding and building a traceable supply chain that integrates seamlessly with our process and partners and resonates with consumers.
“Our goal is to establish a supply chain that allows materials to go through a few cycles of reuse before reaching us for regeneration.”
How are you planning to scale the technology and what challenges are you facing on the way?
We’re working on a commercial scale facility, primarily focused on polyester regeneration, to increase production capacity. Our first challenge is achieving cost equivalency with traditional materials due to the efficiency of long-established processes like oil refining. Additionally, we're building an entirely new supply chain, which requires significant investment in research and development and collaboration with industry partners. We’re learning from the industry and the supply chain integration to incorporate that knowledge into creating the best solution possible.
“Polyester is the most widely used raw material.”
How important are brand partnerships in your commercialization strategy?
Brand partnerships are crucial for us to tell a compelling story that clearly communicates the sustainability of products and makes consumers want to participate in circularity. We collaborate with a range of brands, from large companies like Zara to smaller brands like GANNI and designers, such as Tommy Bogo and Kozaburo, showcasing at fashion weeks. These partnerships help integrate our material cycora® across the fashion industry, making recycled options more accessible for customers.
What are your future goals for Ambercycle?
Our primary goal is to make decarbonized raw materials more widely available. In the long term, we plan to construct multiple processing facilities across the world and refine our supply chain to support global textile waste management.
The materials in our clothing and textiles are interwoven with a myriad of cultures, communities, systems, ecosystems, structures, questions, and concepts, as well as ways of thinking, working, and living. When we unravel this context, we can see the scale on which our everyday decisions can make a difference — and the extent to which materials really do matter.
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BY
TEXTILE EXCHANGE
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