環保材料介紹

    Fast fashion brands have become the choice for people to buy clothes every day. However, such a business model has also become an environmental killer.

With the rise of the sustainable trend, many companies actively promote the recycling of old clothes, introduce full-cycle design, and move towards recycling. You may have such an experience that the newly bought clothes are too late to wear, and the brand has released a new style.

Shein, the fast fashion leader in mainland China, can even be updated in "days", with 6,000 new products on the shelves a day. What's even more unbelievable is that the average price is only RMB 68. The low price is hard to keep consumers tempted. This is a characteristic of the contemporary clothing industry. You can choose from a large number of low-priced fashion clothing, coupled with occasional discounts from brands and channels. Many people have a wardrobe full of clothes, and some may not wear them a few times. Poor quality or poor fit, it doesn’t hurt to lose it, because clothing is more like a consumable these days.

The "quick replacement" model has become an environmental killer. Fast fashion giants once estimated that people aged 25 to 45 in Taiwan own an average of 75 pieces of clothing, but 15 pieces are hardly worn. People in this age group discard at least 5.2 million pieces of clothing every year, which is equivalent to 9.9 pieces of clothing being thrown into the trash or old clothes recycling bins every minute.

Is there anything wrong with the "quick replacement" business model?

In Chile's Atacama Desert in South America, more than 300 hectares of land have been piled up with "clothes mountains". Second-hand clothes that no one cares about are exposed to the hot sun. Foreign media describe it as a "old clothes cemetery" ".

According to the statistics of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2018, clothes from a garbage truck are incinerated or dumped into landfills every second.

The fashion industry has become an environmental killer, not to mention water and carbon emissions data.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) pointed out in 2020 that the fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water every year, enough to meet the water needs of 5 million people. The 2020 Global Fashion Agenda report estimates that the carbon emissions of the fashion industry will rise to about 2.7 billion metric tons in 2030.

As sustainability becomes mainstream, fast fashion giants push for circular initiatives. H&M and Uniqlo both have recycling programs for old clothes. According to the status of recycled clothes, they can be sold or donated as second-hand clothes, downgraded into rags, or converted into Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) sources, etc.

At the H&M store in Stockholm, Sweden, you can also rent certain collections of clothing.

R-PET yarn made from old clothes waste Taiwan has excellent technical strength Although old clothes recycling can prolong the service life of clothes, it is not a panacea. Take the recycling of old clothes in Taiwan as an example. According to statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency of the Executive Yuan, the recycling rate of old clothes will drop from 85% in 2016 to 64% in 2021, due to the decline in the quality of finished clothes and the reduction in channels for exporting used clothes. Furthermore, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (Ellen MacArthur Foundation), which is committed to the circular economy, pointed out that at present, clothing production usually does not consider the recycling level. Brands may choose various mixed materials when selecting materials, but there is still a lack of large-scale technology to dismantle each item. material.

If the old clothes recycled in Taiwan cannot be exported or downgraded for use, they can finally be transformed into SRF.

Currently in Taiwan, the proportion of incineration and energy treatment has risen to 36%.

Now, waste textile fibers and old clothes can also be made into recycled polyester (Recycled PET Fabric, R-PET for short).

Taiwan's textile industry is very proficient in using post-consumer PET bottles to make recycled yarns, but the current volume of post-consumer PET bottle recycling can no longer keep up with the global demand for RPET yarns.

Li Ruohua, head of the sustainable verification team of the Textile Industry Research Institute, said that Taiwan's textile industry now needs to import post-consumer PET bottle bricks to make R-PET yarn, and not only the textile industry has the need to use environmentally friendly recycled materials. If various industries rush to use post-consumer plastic bottle recycled materials in the future, for Taiwan, which produces man-made fibers, it may hinder the future prospects of the industry.

The industry has gone further, and because European and American brand owners require the supply chain to follow up on environmental protection and sustainability, many players have developed the ability to convert waste fabrics into R-PET yarns. The Taiwanese industry can also make waste fabrics into recycled ester grain long fibers. The yarns are stronger, neater and shiny than short fiber yarns, which is a very good technical strength.

However, at present, the proportion of R-PET yarn made from waste cloth and old clothes is still lower than the recycled yarn from post-consumer PET bottles. The biggest problem is that the source is not stable enough.

If stock fabrics and trimmings are used, the composition is clear, and there is no obstacle in the production of textile factories. However, old clothes are generally mixed with various materials, and how to pick out materials that can be recycled is a big problem. Li Ruohua said, "The value must be revealed only when the sorting is very fine."

As the demand for textile recycled materials increases in the future, the cost of sorting and selecting old clothes is expected to decrease.

On the other hand, fashion design education also introduces sustainable issues.