Changing fashion’s conventional take-make-waste model into a circular loop is going to require a group effort, according to panelists at Sourcing Journal’s Sustainability Summit.
In the “Taking a Circular Journey” session moderated by SJ sourcing and labor editor Jasmin Malik Chua, Accelerating Circularity’s president and founder Karla Magruder stated that the supply chain needs to be fully remodeled for circularity. She added that everyone has a role to play in this, and it cannot be left solely to upstream suppliers. “If we want to transition to circularity, we’ve got to recognize that we have to create a new system,” said Magruder. “You cannot…just take [a linear supply chain] and bend it.” She added, “It’s really about building a system with all of the actors in the system, and everybody doing their part.”
Related Stories
Echoing Magruder’s all-hands-on-deck appeal, Dana Davis, vice president, sustainability, product and business strategy at Mara Hoffman, sees the need for collaboration between the fiber creator, the supply chain and brands to scale material innovations. Taking action on the brand side, Mara Hoffman found the “right partner” in Circ, and began the lengthy process of bringing the material to market. In addition to determining where the material could fit into different product categories, the company considered its supply chain partners’ other customers who might also be able to use Circ. Despite its efforts to be transparent and establish systems that other brands could “tap into,” Davis said that peers haven’t reached out yet to leverage this program.
“We’re a very small company, and we don’t use a lot of fiber at the end of the day,” said Davis. “So we knew in order to actually really push this innovation, we would need other brands to work with us.” She also wants to see more “open-sourced information sharing” in the industry to enable more collaboration.
Facilitating information exchange, Accelerating Circularity launched the Alliance of Chemical Textile Recyclers (ACTR) working group. The organization also discloses results of its own commercial-scale trials that process roughly 72 tons of material and compiles and shares information from the industry’s circular initiatives in its Reality Zone.
In the spirit of information sharing, Tricia Carey, chief commercial officer at Renewcell, laid out what went wrong—and right—at the company. The Swedish circular pulp producer’s successes—including building a plant in 14 months and producing 18,000 tons of Circulose pulp last year—were followed by financial struggles that started in October 2023. After filing for bankruptcy in February, the company is currently awaiting a decision from administrators regarding a prospective sale, expected some time in April.
Carey attributed Renewcell’s challenges to three main factors. For one, time was an issue. “There really just wasn’t enough time to get this going,” she said. “We were kind of building the plane while it was flying, and we were running out of that runway.”
The public company struggled to meet the financial market’s quarter-to-quarter growth expectations. There was also a discrepancy between “promises versus POs,” as offtake agreements and fiber producer partnerships didn’t match up to actual business.
Finally, she noted that “systemic change” is needed in the “fundamentally broken” industry.
A report from Boston Consulting Group, Textile Exchange and Quantis projects a supply-demand gap for preferred fibers of up to 133 million tons by 2030. Although Carey estimates that figure is likely lower, she did caution that material availability will suffer and prices will subsequently spike if adoption doesn’t grow. “Brands are not meeting their goals…It’s not because there aren’t materials out there or innovations aren’t available,” said Carey. “If brands aren’t choosing it, then that’s really the issue.”
Per Carey, part of what is holding brands back is a lack of textile knowledge and understanding within their organizations, as companies rely on their supply chain for full-package sourcing and material innovation centers get hit heavily by budget cuts. Scaling fiber innovations also requires a company-wide push—from finance and business development to product and design teams. “You might have your champion within a brand, but they don’t necessarily have the support within their company,” Carey said.
Davis said that instead of being “short-sighted” about concerns like costs, brands should be planning further ahead amid supply chain challenges. “We are all up against a massive change that is being begged of us in this industry,” said Davis. “Any brand that’s not actually thinking about the future of their supply chain and where their fiber is coming from is not going to survive.”
