Mark Sumner, Programme Lead for Textiles at WRAP, shares how the organisation is working to overhaul the textiles industry for a more sustainable future
The textile industry is a significant contributor to the global economy, but the growing rates of textile production and consumption are having a detrimental impact on both nature and people. Creating a circular economy for textiles is, therefore, essential for a greener and better world.
WRAP is a non-governmental organisation working to transform broken product and food systems to create circular living for the benefit of climate, nature, and people. One of its key focuses is transforming the world’s textiles system by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, slashing water use, and tackling textile waste. WRAP works with industry leaders in the UK and globally to develop, share, and scale new practices and policies to challenge the status quo and help the industry do business better.
To learn more about the intricacies of WRAP’s work in the textiles sector, Editor Georgie Purcell spoke to Mark Sumner, Programme Lead for Textiles at WRAP.
Why is sustainability in the textile industry such a major concern and why is it important that we address the issue as a matter of urgency?
The textile industry, in terms of scale and scope, is enormous. Everyone has clothes throughout their whole life. We, therefore, have a very high consumption level for textiles. Aside from clothing, there are many other types of textiles that also contribute significantly to the scale of the industry. In terms of scope, the industry is based on a vast range of material types. There are enormously diverse processes and industries that convert those materials into the finished products through very complex supply chains, which can cause many challenges in terms of control and visibility. Scope can also reflect the types of clothing that we wear, from basics like underwear through to investment pieces.
Clothing is very intimately connected to us as individuals. That emotional connection is incredibly important in terms of how businesses operate. At the same time, that connection relates to the evolutionary psychology of who we are as a human species. We want to look and feel good for many evolutionary reasons, and that’s almost hardwired into our decision making. Often, what we see in terms of that decision-making process is that consumers intend to be green in their textile behaviour, but the psychology that is laid into that decision making often pushes the sustainability priority down the list. Ultimately, what we focus on is how good we look.
Textiles is a huge industry, but it’s this scale and scope that exposes it to a wide range of sustainability challenges. These include agricultural issues around land use, pesticide use, fertilisers and soil health, and non-renewable reliance on polyester, nylon, and elastane. There are also challenges around worker rights and working conditions. In addition, the chemicals used in the textile industry can be problematic. The aftercare of garments, for example, can lead to microfibre release. Then there is the matter of end of life – what do we do with our garments when we finish with them?
It’s important that we recognise how the textile industry contributes to environmental and social issues, so we can then start to measure and resolve them. We must also take care to still deliver individuals with an intimate connection to their clothing. If we can’t do this, there will be a failure in the system. WRAP focuses enormously on this system approach. You can’t fix things in isolation without understanding how they interact, both up the supply chain and down the value chain. We must be really clear about those system connections to make the progress required.
How is WRAP working to create a circular economy for textiles?
Our work is centred around the system approach. This is understanding the full lifecycle of textile product materials – how those materials are produced, how they’re converted into a finished product, what happens to that finished product, how consumers use it, how they view it, how they make decisions, and, ultimately, what happens at end of life.
As the textile industry is so complex, you must understand what the interactions are that happen across that supply chain. If you want to put materials through that cycle of manufacturing, use, end of life, and push them back into the cycle – creating a closed loop – you must intimately know and understand what that cycle looks like. Understanding is particularly important when thinking about how we get consumers to release products from their wardrobes to allow them to go back into the system. This is a really big challenge.
Another critical element of what we’re doing is ensuring that we don’t shift burdens. In that lifecycle assessment – when we’re looking at where the problems are and trying to resolve them – if you focus on simply fixing one area without considering the upstream and downstream implications of that, you risk shifting the carbon issue from one part of the supply chain to another.
WRAP is focusing on understanding what the challenges are across the whole of the system to then pinpoint where our opportunities are to influence and change the system, without shifting burdens or creating unintended consequences. We have very clear environmental and citizen lenses on this work, as well as a business lens. If it doesn’t work for business, then it won’t be adopted. We must also focus on understanding policy and how it may or may not help us in terms of that system change.
Focusing on the specifics of your work, can you elaborate on the initiatives WRAP is leading in this area?
There are three key things to look at – our UK Textiles Pact, our work on durability, and our work on ‘closing the loop’.
WRAP is well known in the UK textiles industry for the UK Textiles Pact, which brings together competitors in the retail textiles space and the reuse and recycling communities. We convene a collaborative approach in a pre-competitive space to help the UK textiles industry understand what the challenges and opportunities are and work together to develop solutions to move forward towards a more sustainable approach to textiles. We work with a mix of over 130 organisations – from big brands and retailers to small SME retailers and brands, as well as the reuse and recycling communities, and a group of expert affiliates. We also work with a group of innovators, who are driving forward change and challenging the status quo. This mix of partners is important when we take our system approach, because the immense challenges surrounding the textile industry cannot be fixed by a single organisation. Outside of the UK, we also have work taking place across Europe, North America, and elsewhere.
From the Textiles Pact, there’s two clear areas of work that we are focusing on that we know can drive substantial change within the industry. One of those areas is durability – how we can maximise the utilisation of products. In theory, if we can get products to last for longer and get consumers to use them for longer, that will displace new purchases. As a result of displacing new purchases, there is less demand on virgin materials and on producing more products, reducing the impact across the industry.
The challenge lies in how we measure durability. We have partnered with the University of Leeds to create an approach to measure durability. Whilst measuring durability hasn’t changed anything fundamentally, it’s become clear that consumers find it hard to identify a durable product from a non-durable product. It’s not solely about the brand, type of material, or the weight of the fabric that’s being used – there’s a whole range of factors related to textile engineering. With this knowledge and understanding of how durability works, we can now inform organisations on how to improve the durability of their products, and, importantly, how they can communicate that to consumers. In the background, policy developments are in progress to provide a framework around durability.
As previously highlighted, durability is valuable because it displaces new purchases. However, this creates challenges for businesses. They see it as: creating durable product = selling less. From our research, it’s clear that there are durable products available, but consumers don’t know where they are or how to identify them. We are communicating to businesses that, by meeting customers’ emotional and physical needs, they can sell more products and grow their market share. At the same time, they can draw that market share away from organisations selling product that doesn’t last very long. From a business perspective, we also found that some customers might buy durable products but still only use them for a short period of time, before moving on with new fashion. This is where durability becomes important in the reuse market. If you can demonstrate that products are more durable, they will have more value in the reuse market. For example, charities want durable products because they know they can sell them for more. We’re currently missing the data to indicate the scale of that reuse associated with durability, but all the evidence is pointing in that direction.
Another priority is how we ‘close the loop’ – that circular approach. One of our work streams within the Textiles Pact is called Closing the Loop, and is focused on understanding system dynamics. We know that an enormous amount of textile material ends up in residual waste streams. We also know that a high proportion of the textile materials that go into residual waste could have been reused. If we can extract it or stop it getting into that residual waste stream, it is able to be reused. However, once it gets into the residual waste stream, it’s almost impossible to draw it out. A big part of the work that we’re doing now is understanding how we can intervene at different parts of that post-consumer textiles landscape to maximise the value of those textile materials. We use the value lever to try to drive change in behaviour. The challenge with that value approach, however, is that the reuse and recycling sector is in dire straits currently. It has been under-resourced, lacked investment, and hasn’t reflected some of the big changes that have happened to the industry over the past 15 years. We have a very high volume of textiles material going out of consumers’ wardrobes, being pushed through channels that are blocked and overloaded because of the high volume and low value of those garments that have been pushed into the textile industry. This is not just a UK issue – the production of textiles, including post-consumer textiles, is a global industry.
Within this closing the loop work, we’re looking at how we can encourage and help citizens find better ways of managing their wardrobes. We know consumers want to do something, but are usure what they can do with that product. WRAP has created a recycling locator that allows people to look at where they can recycle materials. We need to focus on how we can collect products in a better way from consumers. We’re also looking at how the reuse market can be driven harder to do that circularity piece. We’re looking at two different angles for our recycling work. There’s closed-loop recycling – clothes are worn, put through a recycling process, and then made into new clothes. That’s a true circularity approach. We’re also focusing on open-loop recycling – taking textiles and displacing new material use, but for different industries. For example, we believe there may be big opportunities in taking recycled clothing to displace virgin material used within the construction industry.
As I mentioned previously, another focus is policy. There are policy opportunities in all our work, but a very clear opportunity is maximising the value of textiles. In the UK, we do not yet have an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme for textiles. It’s clear that we need a mandate from government for an EPR scheme. That policy could and should underpin a lot of the work that will accelerate where we need to get to.
What are WRAP’s standout achievements so far in its mission to make the textiles industry greener?
Looking at the positive history that WRAP has been involved in, the ability for us to get people around the table and to operate in a competitive space is a key achievement. Without these interactions, you can’t drive an industry response to an industry challenge.
A part of this is our footprint tool, which provides the opportunity to compare like for like the performance of different signatories within the Textiles Pact. Brands and retailers, for example, will all be calculating their Scope 3 carbon footprints and their water footprint. It’s really difficult to compare those, but our footprint tool provides a straightforward way to input data, which then depicts how different organisations are performing in comparison to each other. If we know that one brand can achieve better carbon and water savings than others, there’s an opportunity to share in a pre-competitive space how they’ve done that to try to drive change. For every tonne of material being placed on the market, reductions in carbon and water impacts are being seen, and having the footprint tool as the measurer for that is really important.
As I’ve already mentioned, the durability work we’re doing is another strong example of collaboration. We’re now pushing this out in terms of European and wider global reach, working with organisations to showcase how it can be done, whilst also informing policymakers about some of the challenges that are there.
The work that we’ve been doing in terms of closing the loop is also a really important output for what we’re doing.
How big of a challenge is encouraging consumers to adopt more sustainable habits when it comes to fashion and textiles? How are you working with consumers to support this?
Our individual views towards clothing have been built in our psychology for thousands of years. There are aspects of evolutionary psychology that drive our behaviours in terms of engagement with fashion and clothing. We know that status, for example, is defined and demonstrated by the clothes that we wear. Ancient Egyptians were allowed to wear certain clothes, but they could never wear the same clothes that the pharaoh wore. Similarly in the UK, you couldn’t wear red in medieval times because that was a status symbol. If we start by understanding the psychology of fashion and clothing, particularly in the sector of textiles, then we may decide that changing the consumer view of textiles might not be the best thing to do. Instead, we need to focus on how we can fit our environmental approach to how consumers work.
We know in the world of clothing and fashion that there is segmentation – what works for one doesn’t work for another. We know, through the research that we’ve been doing on consumer behaviour, that an individual has different personas. For example, if you’re buying clothing for lounging around the house, you’ll have a different set of criteria for the purchase than if you were buying an outfit for a job interview. If we understand this decision-making process, we can determine that there is no single solution for citizens and sustainability. We must create a range of solutions to allow citizens to make decisions subject to what they’re buying for.
People say that we must rely on the consumers to send the green signals for the industry to change, but I think it’s the other way around. We must make it as easy as possible for consumers to be green, to get the action that is needed. That is a hard feat, but moving away from a single solution set to multiple solution sets is a much better way of doing it.