Moving from a linear to a circular supply chain seems so simple: produce and consume less, choose renewable and recyclable materials, use responsible production methods, design for longevity and biological or technical cycles. So why is most of the textile industry still operating by the old linear model? Why is it so hard to produce sustainable textile products? This is the question I asked as part of the Going Circular Going Cellulose or “(GC)2” research.
Why is it so hard to produce sustainable textile products?
Process
I decided to choose the simplest textile product I could think of as an entry point to the production process: a tea towel. I bought a cheap set of cotton tea towels, as a benchmark example of textiles from a linear system. I literally picked one of the tea towels apart, which helped me to break down the production process and explore how it could be different. By mapping all this, I created an overview of design decisions made, from the choice of warp and weft yarns, to how to weave and how to finish the fabric. All the options added up to a complex web of possible fabrics, all with different characteristics and qualities. Using this visual map, it was possible to anticipate and compare the effects of different design decisions towards a more sustainable product.
To make the story of the complexity in textile production not just visible but tangible, I found it important to also produce a range of different combinations resulting from the abstract diagram. It became a series of ten tea towels with different degrees of sustainability. The samples of which were woven and finished at Enschede Textielstad and could be compared on environmental impact, cost, functional performance, and look and feel. These ten tea towels show very clearly that something which is very sustainable in theory, might not be so sustainable in reality. For instance one of the samples is so light and thin it’s clearly unsuitable for use in the kitchen. The functional performance of the textiles was tested at the labs of Saxion University of Applied Science against the store-bought benchmark sample. Surprisingly, the benchmark performed better than most of our samples on nearly all parameters. It may not have been a very sustainable product in social and environmental terms, but from a functional and financial perspective it was a good product.
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results
I set out to explore the process of creating a sustainable textile product by deconstructing and analysing an unsustainable textile product and re-engineering and designing it with the aim for it to become as sustainable as currently possible. In the process different interpretations of sustainability were shown through diagrams and prototypes, which illustrated how more sustainable choices affected the final product. If you try to focus on a single objective, like creating the product with the lowest environmental impact, that means compromising elsewhere on aspects like affordability and performance. A product that’s practically perfect in every way appears -for now- unattainable.
That there is much more to textile than just a warp and a weft crossing is no surprise, but being confronted with this through the diagrams and the the tea towel samples creates a different level of understanding. It’s one thing to understand the complexity of a production process conceptually, but quite another to experience the effects of design decisions almost in real time. This research helps understand why it’s so challenging to make a truly sustainable and/or circular textile, but also highlights opportunities for change and suggests where interventions are most needed and/or likely to have a big impact. The range of prototypes that were produced serve as a tangible communication tool, helping designers and producers in the textile industry compare how effective and feasible different ways to make a textile more sustainable currently are, and subsequently make better choices.
That there is much more to textile than just a warp and a weft crossing is no surprise, but being confronted with this through the diagrams and the the tea towel samples creates a different level of understanding. It’s one thing to understand the complexity of a production process conceptually, but quite another to experience the effects of design decisions almost in real time. This research helps understand why it’s so challenging to make a truly sustainable and/or circular textile, but also highlights opportunities for change and suggests where interventions are most needed and/or likely to have a big impact. The range of prototypes that were produced serve as a tangible communication tool, helping designers and producers in the textile industry compare how effective and feasible different ways to make a textile more sustainable currently are, and subsequently make better choices.