Fast Fashion Starts Environmental Revolution, H&M Will Launch The First New Sustainable Fabric Products.

This spring, H&M group will become the first clothing retailer to sell Circulose environmental fabrics.

What is Circulose? It is a new natural material produced by Re:newcell, a Swedish fashion company, made of upgraded recycled clothing and fashion waste. H&M group held a small stake in Re:newcell in 2017.

In 2012, a group of entrepreneurs from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm founded Re:newcell. Two years after the establishment of the company, the first prototype of Circulose product was born. It was a yellow dress that was once touted as the world's first garment made of recycled fabrics. After that, the company invested $20 million, including H&M group's Co:Lab investment company, Nanfeng workshop and kappa company.

Circulose fabric is pure cotton material extracted from waste from old clothes and fashion production, but it can also be incorporated into viscose fiber. The new products launched by H&M will contain these two components. H&M refused to disclose details of the project, but said that the products will be sold on global and physical stores this spring. The proportion of the two raw materials in the on-line products is 50%, which are recovered from the old cotton jeans (non group supplied) and Circulose extracted from the FSC certified wood.

Judging from the situation in November, the H&M group tends to start testing and launching Textile Innovation before fully deploying it. Under its Weekday brand, the group, jointly with Finland renewable fiber technology start-ups InfinitedFiber, launched their innovation project, the two piece garment made of IFC fabric, and invited Maisie Williams (MaisieWilliams) to endorse it.

Eric, Carlson, a sustainable fashion investment manager at H&M group's Vc firm Co:Lab, told WWD exclusively about the new initiative and its investment in other areas, such as second-hand platform Sellpy, textile recycling company WornAgain and TreetoTextile, and e-commerce startup company Thread, WWD. All these help the company to recycle raw materials in an all-round way.

The H&M group has set a goal that all products and materials should be acquired and recycled in a more sustainable way by 2030. This is one of the core tasks of Co:Lab. Carlson said: "through investment groups, we hope to accelerate innovation and help these companies expand." This is very important because the fashion industry is still dominated by cotton and polyester, thus hindering the realization of sustainability goals.

"Cotton has some problems with sustainability," Carlson said. He added that he speculated that some of the fabrics currently used by H&M would be "replaced by new cellulose fibers".

The high demand of cotton for water, fertilizer and pesticide and the consumption of resources and energy by polyester make them become high consumption raw materials. According to the Ellen Macarthur foundation, the amount of water required to produce 1 kilograms of cotton fiber is up to 4300 liters (the amount of water required for dyeing and finalizing processes is included).

"We have reduced the use ratio of cotton. I hope this trend will continue. There will be many innovations in fabric, and more new fibers will be seen in the future. Carlson said. Although it did not disclose the overall use of H&M materials, Carlson pointed out, "I can't say exactly how much cotton we use, but I can say that it is the largest fabric we have." Like many brands, the group is reducing its reliance on raw materials as much as possible.

Circulose may be able to solve the problem of cotton and polyester at the same time, Re:newcell CEO Patrick PatrikLundstr (PatrikLundstr m) said in an interview with WWD. Basically, 1 kilograms of Circulose per kilogram produces only 2 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

"We are also communicating with the fashion industry. We want to provide a sustainable solution for the industry. " Lundstrom emphasized.

A sustainable procurement report released by McKinsey in October shows that purchasing experts have realized the demand potential of recyclable materials, which has also increased the pressure of material innovators to push the results from the laboratory to the market.

Lundstrom said that it takes about 5 years for an innovative product to be commercialized from laboratory to trial. In addition, these results will take 5 to 10 years to be accepted by the market. "We can introduce things that have been accepted by the public into the existing value chain. The biggest challenge for us is to expand rapidly. "

In addition, Lundstrom also pointed out that Re:newcell's chemical recovery process accords with all relevant environmental policies of Sweden and the European Union. The company is now striving for the third party certification in 2020. In the process of producing Circulose, some small parts such as zippers, buttons and dyes need to be separated from waste fabrics. This technology is not available to competitors who can only recycle white textiles. After separation, cellulose pulp is made, dried and converted into new Circulose wafers. Like cellulose, Circulose is a biodegradable organic polymer.

Scale and quality seem to be difficult. Due to the loss of quality after the degradation of raw materials, the large-scale recycling of textiles to textile ends has not yet been realized. Re:newcell's pilot plant has been able to produce about 7000 metric tons of Circulose slurry annually. They plan to build factories in Europe, and the new plant will have a capacity of about 60000 tons.

The long development cycle and the shortage of funds needed to scale are hampering the commercialization of new fibers. But even if the scale is large enough, the final fabric adoption rate is not always guaranteed. A report released by Boston Consulting Group and Holland sustainable fashion innovation platform FashionforGood in January this year showed that Lyocell (Tencel) was one of the most mature new raw material solutions. It was made decades ago, but its market penetration is still less than 1%.

The report also shows that most of the start-ups developing new raw materials, or 60%, are in the initial stage, and the scale is growing slowly. But on the other hand, 70% of the circular economy operation mode has been commercialized, and has gained "considerable market share" and investors' attention.

From Marley's silk thread, which is limited to technology and artists, to commercial synthetic alternatives such as Econyl, it shows that the fashion industry is ready for various fabric solutions. Econyl is a regenerated nylon fiber made by Aquafil, a 50 year old Italy family company. It is currently used by more than 900 brands worldwide.

To get industry breakthroughs, textile innovators need continuous support from the brand side. At the same time, they also need to abide by their commitments in greenhouse gas emission reduction, do well in certification and evaluation, so that they may be left behind. However, the most important key word is still "scale".

Speaking of the project co operating with Re:newcell, Carlson said: "for the whole industry, this is a huge milestone. Re:newcell is ahead of many other companies, "Lundstrom stressed." now brands need to take action to support fabric innovators. "