Waste, end of life, fibre reclamation

Prior to Jonas Starke's lecture recycling only meant sorting clothes to sell in second hand markets and others to be shredded and upcycled into yarns in some third world country. 92 million tonnes of the 100 billion clothes produced annually that have the potential to be recycled again end up in landfills. The absence of recycling facilities is an issue since our industry produces more than we can consume.

Previously, I was not aware of an organised sector's existence to recycle clothing right from collection to feeding them into a closed loop manufacturing cycle and collaborating with brands making recycling a convenient experience. I:CO system provides an efficient solution for increasing garment recycling with technological advancements and building a consumer and brand base by providing end to end services. The organisation must always invest and look into new recycling options because the field of clothing recycling technology is still developing. Since there is less need for fibres in today's industry, prices of fibres are decreasing relative to the cost of a t-shirt.

The European Commission in order to meet national and EU recycling and recovery targets launched a policy tool called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) that extends the producer's financial and operational responsibility for a product to include the management of the post-consumer stage. As a result of the regulation's pressure on companies to raise prices in order to maintain the same margin of profit, the customer may be forced to suffer the brunt of the policy that was introduced to address the waste management issue. The policy must be perfected to have no gaps and to be advantageous for both the environment and customers.