Even though most textiles have the potential to be recycled into new inputs, today the majority of used clothing ends up in landfills.

One of the main hurdles in saving clothing from the trash is consumer education around garment care and disposal. A Sourcing Journal webinar on Nov. 10 explored a digitized solution for fashion’s wastefulness centered on a small and often overlooked part of a garment: the content and care label. This label is required by law, but shoppers tend to cut the tag out for comfort, discarding information that is crucial for the recycling process, such as fiber composition.

During the discussion, Avery Dennison spoke about its pilot programs to transform the care label through technology. By integrating digital triggers into a garment, such as a QR code on a care tag, manufacturers can share information with the end consumer as well as a secondhand buyer or recycler. With European Union regulation mandating that by 2025 all garments need to be recycled, it has become imperative for supply chain stakeholders to come together to build more circular fashion systems.

Aside from the sustainability implications of garment-level connectivity, these innovations will also enable brands to better communicate the provenance of fashion merchandise to consumers who increasingly desire transparency.

Watch this webinar to learn:

• The current challenges and inefficiencies in textile-to-textile recycling
• How connected garments could facilitate improved sorting and recycling processes
• What digital triggers could look like
• The supply chain and inventory management potential in digitized care and content labels
• What consumers are asking for when it comes to sustainability
• How companies of all sizes can get started with circularity and digitized labels

Speakers:

• Debbie Shakespeare, Senior Director, Sustainability, Compliance and Core PLM at Avery Dennison RBIS
• Sarah Swenson, Global Senior Manager Sustainability at Avery Dennison RBIS
• Karla Magruder, Founder & President at Accelerating Circularity
• Alice Hartley, Director, Global Sustainability at Gap Inc.
• Caletha Crawford, Publisher of Sourcing Journal (moderator)