THE NEXT STEPS FOR SUSTAINABILITY AT KINGPINS AMSTERDAM

The return on investments in science, creativity and people were evident at Kingpins Amsterdam and Transformers, where sustainability was the leading story for almost all of the denim mills.

“The momentum on sustainability is at all levels,” said Tricia Carey, Lenzing director of global business development for denim. “There is now a concern from fiber to finished garment.”

The seminar series, Transformers, raised questions about the cost of sustainability. Speakers included representatives from Target Corporation, Lenzing, Jeanologia, Sai-tex, BlueSign, BCI, Bayer e3, Garmon, Archroma and more. “This is a wonderful opportunity for the denim leaders to connect and address industry challenges together,” said Andreas Dorner, Lenzing commercial director for U.S. and Europe.

At Transformers, Dorner presented about the value of sustainability, specifically Lenzing’s latest innovation, Refibra. He explained how the industry works together to develop new ideas and the process in which Lenzing is  reusing post industrial cotton scraps to make a new fiber called Refibra™ branded lyocell fiber. Dorner said time and financial investment is necessary to creating a more sustainable denim and apparel industry. “There is no balance sheet about the costs of environmental damage,” he quipped.

Denim experts agreed. At Transformers, fashion and sustainability journalist Paulina Szmydke-Cacciapalle stressed the fact that sustainable practices and innovation ultimately pay for itself, adding that companies with high ratings for CSR and ESG factories have lower costs of debt and equity. Meanwhile Target Senior Designer of Denim, Kristin Kimm, shared how the U.S. retailer is taking a lot of small steps to make a big impact in offering the end users sustainable products for value prices. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Kimm said.

Read the full article from our friends over at carvedinblue.lenzing-fibers.com, or click here to subscribe to their monthly newsletter with a recap of all the month's best articles. 

Patagonia | Reformation

Patagonia

Environmentalism is what drives this conscience driven brand.  For Patagonia the act of giving to local environmental groups is not charity it is a way and the cost of doing business.

For their small jeans line Pataonia uses a special dye process that bonds colour more easily onto the fabric which results in a denim which wears down naturally without need of washing. Their recent collection comprises 3 raw men’s and 3 raw women’s garments none of which will touch water as they wear in to the owners shape.

Patagonia and social responsibility:

• Ensuring humane working conditions throughout all their supply chain.
• Adhering to Intl. labour and human rights standards.

Patagonia and their Environmentalism drive:

• They give 1% of all sales to support environmental organisations around the World funding at grass roots levels.
• Donations of some $78 million in cash and kind since 1985 in services to thousands of community based groups working to create positive change in the planet.

So what are the funded projects doing?

• Taking down dams
• Restoring forests and rivers
• Finding solutions to mitigate climate change
• Protecting land and marine habitats
• Protecting endangered plants and animals
• Supporting local organic and sustainable agriculture

And what of their clothes?

• “ Patagonia’s worn wear” = repair; recycle it; make it last
• “Recycled fibre” = Patagonia’s fleece tops are made from 100% recycle plastic bottles into polyester fibre.

Reformation

Commitment to best ecologically sustainable and social practices goes beyond the basics. Reformation Denim makes these practices an integral part of their brand ethos.

They put sustainability at the core of everything they do.

©Reformation

Using the most efficient, eco friendly and pro-social technologies and practices possible.

At the factory.

They invest in green building infrastructure minimising waste, water and energy footprints.  They invest in people by providing on the job training at their manufacturing facilities thereby providing opportunities for the future for their local workers.

REFORMATION Source electricity from 100% wind power supplies, using LED lighting, installing a “cool” roof which reflects heat and light away, offsetting about 200 tons of C02 equivalent emissions per year.

They recycle compost organic waste, donate all the textile scraps with zero waste being the goal.

Over 75% of the workforce are women or from ethnic minorities and all are paid more than the minimum wage.

By mainly selling their clothes on line the company uses 30% less energy than standard retail.

They also control their shipping and supply chain partners to ensure that even they adhere to the lowest impact solutions possible.

When applying for certification to B-Corps whose environmental standards are rigorous Reformation did not have to do anything more than what they are already doing to immediately be certified.

Levis | Nudie

Levi Strauss        

©Levis

Levi Strauss & Co is one of, if not the most sustainable jeans brand in the World. Levi is pioneering practices to reduce the use of water, energy, harmful chemicals and other harmful things in the denim apparel industry. In doing so they take their partner suppliers along with this mission to ensure that they comply with best practices. All their suppliers must meet their terms of engagement rules be they denim fabric manufacturers or jeans makers before they can become a supplier. Such terms of engagement cover child labour rules, working hours and conditions,  health and safety and environment best practices. Levi insists on consistent quality and so by making their products last longer this also contributes to reduced climate contamination. With their Waste<Less™, Water<Less™ and Wellthread™ collections, Levi's are making a considered effort to provide sustainable products to the market.  

©Levis

Nudie Jeans

The thoughtful jeans brand.  If you are in love with jeans – wear NUDIE!

©Nudie Jeans

They are the brand that combines a vintage heart with maximum sustainability. Using 100% organic cotton Nudie is a brand that has turned their core values into core actions. The company is a member of the Fir Wear Foundation ensuring social responsibility in their supply chain:  ensuring all their suppliers pay a minimum living wage, outlawing under age workers, following all health and safety rules. For Nudie, sustainability rules with the three “R’s” : Repair - offering a free repair service – a mantra of “don’t throw it away, re-use it”, Re-selling 2nd hand products in all their stores and Recycling worn out products into re-spun yarn or re-worked garments.

©Nudie Jeans

Such endeavours have earned the company the prestigious ”sustainable style” award as well as a loyal band of followers and a guaranteed place in all the best multi-denim stores Worldwide.

H&M | Mud Jeans

H&M

Can fashion become sustainable?

©H&M

©H&M

Today, being conscious in every part of the fashion making process is at the core of our business.

©H&M

How do they do it?

• Increasing their use of sustainably sourced fabrics and other materials year on year. The aim is for all cotton in their ranges to come from sustainable sources by 2020.
• Improving working conditions at their suppliers 
• making conscious choices in every step of the garments life from cotton farmers to customers.
• Launched a “conscious choice hangtag” displayed on all garments that qualify within their stringent scheme of sustainability.
• Offering recycling points in all the H&M stores for your old clothes no matter what brand and what condition. H&M recycle these with the goal being to reach a totally circular approach to making textiles and garments.
• Promoting a change of attitude in the mind of their consumers – Re-think your attitude to clothes. Become a less throw away society – Re-wear it! and other positive tips for the way we live with our clothes:

1. Someone’s trash might be your treasure!  Have a clothes swap party.
2. Don’t automatically throw away things that are too short or too small – re-work or cut off to make a different garment.
3. Replace zips, take up hems, patch with contrast.
4. Wash at 30degrees instead of 60 save tone of energy.
5. skip doing laundry so often and save gallons of water.
6. Remember that 26% of the environmental impact of a garment happens after it has left the store.

Mud Jeans

©Mud Jeans

Fashion is the 2nd most polluting industry in the World.  

The global production of all textile fibres consumes 1 trillion gallons of water.

We want to help to change that!

Our dream is:

• Use no chemicals at all
• All water usage is a close circuit of 100% recycled.
• To produce the first carbon neutral pair of jeans.

How?

Cotton.

• 2.4% of the worlds cultivated land is planted with cotton yet it accounts for 24% of the world’s insecticide market and 11% sales of global pesticides.  Being therefore, the most pesticide intensive crop grown on the planet.
• By using a cotton that uses only rain water for irrigation (organic) wereduce the water footprint of Mud Jeans at the outset. 
• By using BCI cotton ( Better cotton initiative) we reduce the damaging effects of cotton growth on people and the environment and train the small crop growers to adhere to better growing standards whilst enabling them to earn a decent living wage.
• By using recycled cotton ( recycled cotton waste and garnetted cotton garments) we save 40% of water, all pesticides or instecticides and eliminate all landfill garments.

Water and Chemicals.

• By Partnering with Yousstex, Tunisia we use Laser technique for garment ageing process and Ozone technology to reduce the water and chemical dependency in both denim and jeans manufacturing.

Recycling.

• Fast fashion like fast food encourages the consumer to buy way more garments that are required.  It is estimated that 30% of garments bought are not worn for a year.   Also estimated that the average person throws away 32kgs of clothing per year.  This all adds up to 1.7 billion kgs of unnecessary waste for landfills.
• Fabrics used by MUD Jeans use 98% cotton of which at least half is recycled. Buttons and other sundries are also made from recycled materials and all packaging is recycled paper.

MUD jeans objective is to close the loop creating cradle to cradle jeans that is commercially feasible.

©Mud Jeans

Green Credentials: Denim Laundry | Energy | Recycling

LAUNDRY

The traditional laundry process involves hand sanding, grinding, ripping to re-create an aged appearance finished off with stone or enzyme washing several times in a giant industrial washing machine with or without bleach to determine the eventual shade of indigo.

Pumice stones of varying sizes are used in the washing machine to create a worn in appearance. Instead of pumice stones we also use enzymes which are a liquidised pumice stone.  

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

The above images demonstrate the stone washing process in a modern commercial laundry. The laundry is a significant part of the jeans making process. 

Stones and chemicals are heavily used to create the vintage and used washes we love so much but they do create a large amount of waste sludge that has to be dealt with in the waste system..

Laser finishing

Laser finishing is a fast growing alternative to the hand degrading process.

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

©Jeanologia

Laser equipment can replicate such effects but the denim purists can easily tell the difference, preferring the hand and stoned effects.  But this process is improving all the time.  Currently Jeanologia in Spain make one of the best machines for such processes.

Sand blasting whilst good at the time was outlawed some years ago as being dangerous.

Acid wash was likewise outlawed fairly soon after it became the hottest fashion jeans finish due to the fact the dry bleached stones caused skin burns and blindness in the operatives.

Energy

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

Alternative sources of energy are now used to reduce what is an energy heavy industry – Solar Power; Wind energy; Water energy.

Recycle / Upcycle

Recycling

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

Waste management is essential in a well run denim Mill. After the spinning process all waste cotton is swept from the floor, cleaned and re-used by blending with longer fibre cotton. Garnetting equipment enables old cotton garments to be chopped up and re-spun blending with longer fibres for strength.

Upcycling for fashion.

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye, ©RialtoJeanProject

Re-use old pieces of denim and cut up garments to make new items. This is more a handcraft based creative approach where each piece is unique. Whilst it is not a huge commercial operation for the high street it is a growing force in the jeans industry where most dedicated jeaners love the individual revival attitude.

Upcycling for the home

©Nudie Jeans

The Blue Jeans Go Green programme which is a trademark of Cotton Inc. repurposes old denim garments into Ultra Touch Denim Insulation.  Apparently, it takes around 500-1000 pairs of jeans to insulate an average sized western home. 

On a more handcraft level creative indigo rugs and accessories such as containers and organisers have reached an almost commercial level of “unique” pieces. Being sold in creative high street stores.

Trend Alert: Green Credentials

Can the fashion industry really be sustainable? 

Did you know that the fashion industry is the 2nd most polluting  industry in the World? Denim itself is a huge contributor to this shocking statistic, being a really filthy business!

Cotton, water and chemicals are the main culprits. The manufacture of textile fibres uses 1 trillion gallons of water per annum with denim production using dangerous chemicals to grow cotton and creating  millions of gallons of wastewater in the dyeing and make process of both denim and jeans. The denim industry uses a lot of water but manufactures products in places that don’t have enough water! Places such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico where the droughts are notorious.

Why are countries without much water making denim and jeans?

The brands and retailers know there is limited water where their jeans are made but they seem not to care because the price of the jean forces them to manufacture in countries with low labour costs regardless of the water supply.

We are told that the consumers demand everything to be done as cheaply as possible whereas it is the retailers who wish to make things cheaper and ever cheaper to capture a higher margin for themselves whilst retaining or increasing their market share by advertising ever low cost jeans.  This encourages the consumer to buy more and dispose of more.

I wonder what would happen if the consumer had an informed choice of the global sourcing strategy of many top jeans brands?

So what of sustainability ?   

Whilst many denim brands are dipping their toes into the concepts of sustainability not many are really making a conscious effort to achieve this.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Later in this month’s analysis of we highlight some of the brands who ARE doing their bit to help the environment, setting aside millions of $ to redress these issues and further applaud those that have built sustainability into their manufacturing strategy from the outset.

But before that let's take a look at where the issues lie, and the improvements that are being made. 

Fibres

Cotton

©Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

It all starts with Cotton. Denim is made primarily from cotton. Although modern denims contain a number of other fibres for fashion for the purpose of this argument we will concentrate on COTTON.    Cotton is a contaminating dirty crop, just 2.4% of the World's cultivated land is planted with cotton yet it accounts for 24% of the Worlds insecticide market and 11% of global sales of pesticides.  It is therefore the most intensive pesticide crop on the planet.

There are different types of cotton available for the fashion industry to use.

ORGANIC cotton is grown with NO PESTICIDES but the output is very small, it is about 1/3 of normal cotton. Such that if it were to reach the output of non organic we would be taking the land from food production.

©Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

FAIRTRADE cotton means that all farmers are guaranteed a living wage for what they grow and sell.

©Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

BCI cotton - This stands for BETTER COTTON INITIATIVE -  where the smaller farmers are trained to grow and harvest their crops in an environmentally friendly way by following certain guidelines:

Use just the right amount of fertilisers

Use just the right amount of water for irrigation

Manage the planting such that water does not pool” around the roots.

Control the use of pesticides.

 OTHER FIBRES the sustainable ones!

©Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

1.     Tencel.  Is a cellulosic fibre originating from tree bark.  It is a “greener” fibre than cotton or many other common textile fibres.  It is grown in a sustaible manner - no pesticides are required to grow the trees.  An organic solvent is used to dissolve the wood chips into a solution. The chemical used to dissolve these chips is very expensive so it is recycled after the process is complete.

2.     Polyester.  Although the fibre itself is not bio degradable if denim was made from 100% polyester this would eliminate all the currently bad elements of the current denim making process..  The fact that it is not biodegradable makes it a tricky fibre for blending.

WATER

©Blue Planet

It takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of regular blue jeans.  “That's more water than it takes to make a ton of cement or a barrel of beer”

In the manufacture of Denim Jeans it takes approximately a whopping 9000 litres of water to make one pair of blue jeans.  Within a denim plant all waste water is recycled or returned to its source which is usually a river in close proximity or used to irrigate the land.  But this water whilst being clean is not always drinkable. 

Ways of reducing water consumption.

Using Ozone finishing Equipment will save 12 litres of water per denim jean.

Removing the de-size process step = saving of 5.9 litres per jean.

Foam dyeingrather than rope or slasher dyeing in one generic dye bath can save up to 5.7 litres of water.

Recycling water used in the denim processes.

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

The above images depict the original primitive method of reclaiming the used dyestuff for further use on the left with a modern water treatment plant on the right.

All denim manufacturers must by law recycle their waste water.

Water is taken from the river ( denim plants are built next to a natural water source) used for dyeing, finishing, washing in the make process of the denim fabric. After which the used water passes through a purpose built treatment plant ( above) and either re-used again and again or returned to the water source.  

 INDIGO DYEING

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye

Denim production not only uses dangerous chemicals to grow conventional cotton it creates millions of gallons of waste water in the dyeing process. 

More harmful chemicals are used to adhere the dyestuff to the cotton. These are eventually washed away into the treatment plant where the water is recycled for the process to start again if the plant is a good one.  Otherwise the waste water is returned back to nature.

Indigo dye is expensive therefore recycling is an advantage.  To recycle the indigo dye sludge we use an Ultra Filtration process to extract the dye to re-use.

Today, less than 20% of the World's denim Mills use "pre-reduced " indigo dye which is a more sustainable dyestuff. The rest use powdered indigo which creates more sludge and slurry in the waste water. Whilst Japanese denim continues to be the most sought after in the world barely a single mill in Japan uses pre-reduced indigo. They still use powdered dyestuff. This seems not to deter the brands or the consumer who regard Japanese denim as the ultimate. Some Japanese Mills however use natural indigo which is much preferable to any chemically produced dye but it is limited in supply, hard to grow everywhere and difficult to handle, washing off extremely quickly making our favoured dark indigo shades hard to retain.

©Indigo The Colour that Changed the World, Catherine Legrand

The above images show what was the old primitive hand dye method from China and India with multiple dye baths to create the desired shade. the bottom right image shows a modern plant where the yarn has been mechanically dyed in "rope" form in huge bulk.