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Competitors Everlane, Eileen Fisher and Zalando come together to help scale supply chains for recycled textiles

Fashion retailers are teaming up to smooth the wrinkles that keep circular fabrics out of mainstream fashions. Read More

Eileen Fisher is among the fashion retailers working on innovative approaches to help build supply chains for recycled textiles. Source: Shutterstock/melissamn

Everlane, Eileen Fisher and other brands seek to create more fashions from recycled materials, which remain rare on retail racks. Many startups are transforming old textiles into materials for new clothes, but few brands buy circular textiles in large amounts.

To confront this problem, a new initiative emerged from stealth mode on Jan. 28. Fiber Club, backed by recycling startup Circ with nonprofits Fashion for Good and Canopy, gathers businesses across apparel supply chains to build “the first roadmap for scaling circular materials.”

Typically, innovations get stuck between development and mass production due to high initial costs, a lack of minimum order quantities and ill-defined paths out of pilot projects, according to sustainability advocates.

“We were inspired by what we’ve seen in other sectors like sustainable aviation fuel, green hydrogen, EVs and even vaccines where several key stakeholders come together to accelerate the scaling of innovations solving big challenges in their respective industries,” Circ CEO and President Peter Majeranowski told Trellis via email.

What is known as a “pre-competitive” approach from Fiber Club seeks to leverage the collective power of Zalando, Everlane, Bestseller and Eileen Fisher. Joining them are suppliers Birla Cellulose and Arvind Limited, both of India; and Foshan Chicley of Guangdong Province, China. A pre-competitive strategy involves companies, often rivals, working together to solve a shared problem.

Speeding up ‘slow fashion’

“This plug-and play solution integrates seamlessly into trusted supply chains, making it easier for brands like ours to embrace sustainable innovations,” Inka Apter, Eileen Fisher’s director of material sustainability and integrity, said in a statement.

Fiber Club’s partners hope they can help to offset the ramp-up of textile waste in this fast fashion era:

  • Eighty-five percent of textiles in the U.S. were either incinerated or landfilled, and only 14 percent recycled in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Those rates haven’t budged since 2000, despite the industry churning out record levels of apparel.
  • Globally, garment production doubled from 2000 to 2014, while the number of times people wear an item dropped by 36 percent, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
  • Apparel brands are also embracing circular materials to support decarbonization efforts. Zalando, for one, is pursuing recycled materials in its private label clothes toward a target of slashing carbon emissions by 80 percent.

The Fiber Club framework focuses on the pulp for lyocell fiber that Circ recycles from polyester-cotton, which is common in T-shirts and traditionally hard to break down into new material.

“The Fiber Club is designed to remove the biggest hurdles to scaling next-generation recycled fibers,” said Fashion for Good Managing Director Katrin Ley. “By bringing together brands, suppliers, and innovators, we are de-risking investment in circular materials, making large-scale implementation more feasible than ever before.”

Bags of Circ’s recycled textile material. Credit: Circ

An evolving framework

Circ, based in Danville, Virginia, kicked off the framework in a closed meeting with the brand partners in November. They worked under wraps for several months.

“During this time, we worked closely with key stakeholders and partners…to ensure that we could launch with a clear, actionable roadmap for scaling: holding a session at Textile Exchange allowed us to engage with the broader industry and further align on our goals,” Ley said.

Next, the collaboration will focus on proving out the Fiber Club concept and scaling recycled lyocell, a soft fabric typically made from wood pulp.

“Over the next year, we will work closely with our design and development teams, as well as suppliers, to bring products made of Circ Lyocell to fruition,” said Everlane Director of Sustainability Katina Boutis. “Along the way, we will work through our R&D process to test, provide feedback, measure impacts, and incorporate the material into our designs in the long term.

“Because Circ sits upstream as a recycler and takes blended feedstock streams, we have created strong downstream supply chain partnerships over the last couple years, which we could leverage for this approach,” said Circ’s Majeranowski. “Additionally, we have worked closely with our community of recycling peers, partners and brands to understand their challenges, which we built this framework to tackle.”

The material

Circ’s technology breaks down polycotton textiles of any color into chemical building blocks. “We’re able to handle everything from 100 percent cotton to 100 percent polyester, and every blend ratio of the two in between,” Majeranowski said of the waste materials it obtains from post-industrial sources, such as factory discards. 

Circ’s recycling process converts that feedstock into raw materials including cellulosic pulp, the basis for manmade cellulosic fibers, as well as the chemicals purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and monoethylene glycol (MEG) for making polyester.

In the Fiber Club process, Birla Cellulose creates lyocell staple fiber from Circ’s cellulosic pulp. Next, Arvind and Foshan Chicley make textiles from the fiber. Companies then decide on bulk amounts to purchase, and pricing. Finally, fashion brands decide which manufacturers will craft the fabric into clothes to sell.

“By grouping together orders at the fiber and yarn level, we are able to reach minimum order quantities and therefore provide pilot quantities at a more reasonable price, which accelerates internal buy-in for a long term commitment,” Majeranowski said. “We have already begun the discussions with the brands on indicative volume commitments, and through the pilot process, the optimal outcome is to convert these to binding long-term commitments.”

Optimism about the approach

Experts in apparel sustainability expressed hope in this approach to scale sustainable materials. Most important are establishing bulk pricing frameworks and offtake agreements, according to apparel industry analyst Marcian Lee of Lux Research.

“Recyclers expect a green premium but brandowners don’t want to pay more than they need to,” he said. That’s why potentially helping recyclers and buyers agree on acceptable prices could be a big step forward for the uptake of recycled materials, Lee added.

Here’s how startup Circ recycles old T-shirts and other textiles into pulp for new lyocell or other cellulosic fibers. Credit: Circ

Can Fiber Club help Circ move past the innovation “valley of death” that has trapped other startups? For example, although its material appeared in designs by Levi’s and H&M, the promising textile-to-textile recycler Renewcell went bankrupt in February 2024 after some buyers failed to honor offtake agreements. It re-emerged four months later as Circulose.

“Circ Fiber Club is an excellent collaborative initiative incorporating systems thinking among fiber, suppliers and brands,” said Tricia Carey, Renewcell’s former chief commercial officer and an industry pioneer in sustainability. “This is a great start, and further expansion of the supply chain partners will enhance the Circ Fiber Club.”

Fiber Club’s backers are inviting other companies to adopt the framework, hoping it will apply to other “next-generation” materials.

This collaboration addresses key barriers to alternative fibers, according to Planet Tracker Analyst Richard Wielechowski. “It helps with volume commitments by pooling orders, it reduces risk for any one brand, it involves supply chain actors, so not the brands dictating to the supply chain,” he said. “The challenge would be moving from the initiative to a full commercial relationship, but it certainly looks an interesting first step.”

[Join over 1,500 professionals transforming how we make, sell, and circulate products at Circularity, April 29-May 1, Denver.]

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