Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] There are a number of actions all businesses can take to contribute to a healthier environment. 0:09 Businesses need to move away from a linear take, make, waste model into a more circular economy as- [upbeat music] 0:27 Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:42 Consider this question: can your clothes have an afterlife? Hopefully by now you know the answer to this question is a resounding yes. 0:52 But there are big implications for both consumer and industry when we dig into this a little bit deeper. 1:00 So for today's episode, since a new report is out on reuse and recycling of textiles, I thought I would narrow in a little bit on circularity for this first segment. 1:13 This particular report identifies specific strategies that I will discuss. 1:18 For the next several minutes, I will help unravel the news and look at all the spin on this topic, and I will, uh, kinda help you thread the needle, so to speak, as I give my thoughts for what is next for circularity in business. 1:35 Later on in the show, I will always be interviewing some amazing guests. 1:39 I will be talking to Kim Cieslik, director of codes at New Buildings Institute, and then I'm gonna wrap up the show with L- Alexa Carlin, founder and CEO of Women EmpowerX. So let's get started. 1:54 Only about 15% of used clothes and other textiles in the United States get reused or recycled. Can you believe that? The other 85% head straight to the landfills or the incinerator. 2:11 Now, this waste of resources contributes to climate change and pollutes our waterways. It's not surprising. 2:19 In order to address this problem, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, also known as NIST, recommends specific strategies. This report is based on a three-day workshop that was held last September. 2:35 Now, it brought together manufacturers, industry associations, recyclers, waste managers, researchers, policymakers, and several major fashion brands that share the goal of increasing circularity in the textile industry. 2:53 The report identifies textiles as including clothing, shoes, bedding, towels, let's say, uh, upholstery fabrics, and even carpeting. 3:04 However, the main type of textile in the municipal waste stream is discarded clothing. Now, [laughs] that's what I found very interesting in this p- report. 3:15 On average, each person in the United States discarded roughly 103 pounds of textiles in 2018, which is the most recent year of data that's av- b- available. Can you believe it? I mean, I found this so fascinating. 3:32 103 pounds for each person. So what, then, are the solutions and strategies that we need to put into place? 3:43 Naturally, the solution comes in the form of a more circular economy that we've talked about, but that is actually easier said than done, right? I mean, if you think about it. There are a number of challenges here. 3:56 The infrastructure and systems for collection of waste textiles are not well-established. Sorting and grading of textiles rely on expensive manual labor, and we all know labor we don't currently have. 4:13 Also, commercial-scale recycling processes for textiles are fiber type dependent, and they require pure, reliable, and even high-volume feedstock, and generally cannot process mixed material inputs. 4:30 So there's a lot to consider if you kinda bundle all of this right now. Perhaps one of the biggest hurdles is the fact that textile circularity is not economical in the current system. Yes, you heard me correctly. 4:45 It isn't cheap, and when it's not cheap, we tend to resist as investors. You know, when you think about Wall Street. 4:54 So what's more, large-scale reuse, repair, and recycling is hindered by high transportation, labor, and processing costs. So you see the hurdles here. You see everything that's a problem. So what, then, can be done? 5:11 This is what we have to think about. The report suggests roughly a dozen different things. And, you know, I'm not gonna go into all of them because we'd be here, you know, literally for hours talking about them. 5:22 But I- I'm going to go through them, i- a few of them. I, I wanna share a few of the big ones that I thought k- kinda stood out. The first one, the industry needs harmonization on terminology. Simply, I've had to... 5:37 I, I kinda agree with this wholeheartedly because we're talking about definitions, classifications, docum- uh, kinda documentary standards, and industry tools to facilitate consistent, transparent, circular business e-ways and actually to track progress. 5:57 I mean, I think all of that is critical so for the past two decades of covering the Internet of things, for example how many times have you all heard me repeat a very similar statement when it comes to referencing kind of the alphabet of soup in IoT terminology? 6:15 Well, the same thing is happening in, in the textile industry. We need a standard language and standards in general if we want to make any progress with change. 6:27 Second, the report suggests increased data collection and access. You know, I agree with this one in a very big way. 6:38 NIST sees significant data gaps throughout material, product, uh, market and system levels. All of this is fostered by a general lack of transparency across the industry. 6:53 If you don't collect the information, if you're not transparent, you, you got huge problems. 6:59 So thus, if you think about it, NIST recommends publicly available databases, registries, and repositories that need to be developed by following a fair data principles of findability, uh, y- maybe even say accessibility, and one thing you hear me talk about all the time is interoperability and reusability. 7:23 If you don't have those kind of things, you're never going to move that needle, as you always hear me say. 7:29 It also suggests strategies need to be advanced enough to support transparency, we're back to that transparency conversation, while protecting proprietary information. 7:41 You know, businesses aren't gonna participate if they think they're going to be exposed, so you have to look at all of these elements. 7:49 Another really part, uh, important part of this report, third maybe is you wanna say, the report suggests technological development is actually needed to improve sorting, grading, and pr- reprocessing. 8:03 The industry needs development of high-speed automated sortation systems to rapidly develop and identify fiber compositions and separate, uh, or even to separate textiles based on desired characteristics. 8:21 And I think more than anybody kind of knows in the textile industry, you have to kinda understand that. I think the other part of this is you need education. Education is critical. 8:32 We need education and outreach across all ages, all sectors of the population to support sustainable consumption and product life extension. I cannot emphasize enough the need for education. 8:48 How many times have I preached this very same thing in other industries? I, I can't emphasize enough education, education, education. 8:58 You know, if, if we don't understand, you, you can't progress with this and we need it across all five of the generations that we talk about that are in the workforce, that anybody who- who's out there needs to understand it. 9:11 So the next point is also a very big one. We need more research on the economic assessment of current and potential domestic infrastructure and market developments. 9:24 And I guess finally what I wanna talk about is collaboration. We need collaboration and increased communication. 9:33 We need this collaboration and communication simply across all industrial sectors and throughout the value chain. 9:40 You, you can't emphasize this enough as well because this is necessary and vital to understand the different dimensions and recognize the diverse perspectives and needs of the various stakeholders. 9:54 And those are, I think are the really great points presented, and, and there's others but I, I think there are many more we could go into and suggestions in the report relating to standards, advanced recycling process development, uh, policy and, and the role bl- brands play. 10:12 But I, I wanted you basically to understand some of the key points that I thought were important, but you can look at this report if you wanna learn more and check out the report called Facilitating a Circular Economy for Textiles on NIST website. 10:27 But basically, I wanted you to understand there's a lot to be done here, but let me leave you with one opinion for this topic for the day. 10:37 There are a number of actions all businesses can take to contribute to a healthier environment. I mean, really contributing to a stronger, healthier ecosystem as we talk about. 10:49 Businesses need to move away from a linear take, make, waste model and to a more circular economy as we talk about. 10:57 This circular thinking means we are makers or a maker model is now more to focu- focus on to produce, reduce, and reuse. Textiles are certainly one where we really have a great example here. 11:14 I talk about this specifically in my book, Sustainable in a Circular World, specifically not only are we filling landfills, but we're also wasting so much water. 11:24 It takes nearly three thousand liters of water to make one cotton T-shirt and w- almost four thousand liters of water to make a pair of jeans. So the solution must lie in circularity. It isn't going to be easy. 11:40 We all know that. It takes a lot of effort as w- as we all know, as we all talk about. 11:45 Change never is, but we have to think about making our world greener, and we have to recognize the planet crisis we've all created.Making this change is monumental for industries, and we all get that. 12:00 All industries need to participate. But I love what NIST is doing here by creating some very tangible strategies for how to take the first step in the right direction. 12:13 We all have to crawl before we can walk, as I always like to say. The good news is that if we all collaborate, if we do it together, we can make a huge difference in the, in the textile industry. 12:26 And here's my tip for this week. 12:28 Let's all take some time to share suggestions for how to make this more or this move, you know, a more of a circular economy, you know, that we think this linear to a more circular one that we're, we want to do. 12:44 How can we be more responsible and how can we source, produce, and distribute at our market and how do we consume differently? 12:56 You know, how are we changing the way we produce, reduce, and reuse? How can we tackle the hurdles that still exist? How can we all collaborate? I mean, these are great questions, right? 13:12 How can we leverage the supply chain? We're looking at logistics and transportation. We're looking at retail. We're looking at marketing. You've heard some, some of the suggestions on this segment. 13:27 What would you add to weave a new idea into improving textiles? That's what I'd love to know. 13:34 All right, as always, if you have thoughts on what I've talked about today, please send me a tweet to continue this discussion on social media at Connected World. 13:45 All right, listeners, that is all the time I have again for this first segment. Please check out our website at connectedworld.com or our show website at thepeggysmedleyshow.com. 13:55 Make sure to share and subscribe to our episodes each week. And don't forget to check out the Project Sustainability Podcast at pspgreen.lipson.com. I hope you're checking out that new podcast. It's really exciting. 14:10 But don't go away. As always, I'll be right back after this commercial break. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. 14:23 [upbeat music]
