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How to close the loop

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How to close the loop
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A discussion about the circular fashion industry
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144
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CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Germany:
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“Circular fashion” is based on the principles of a circular economy and involves the entire life-cycle of it’s products, from design and sourcing, to production, transportation and storage, marketing and sales, the user phase: including reuse, repair and redesign, and finally to material recycling or disposal. Circular fashion is an innovative vision that rethinks every part of the fashion industry and it's production chain. But will it really mean the end of the hyper-consumerist fast-fashion model, or will it be merely a green product improvement by the industry to keep up with the changing demands of their consumers?
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
Hello and thank you all for coming we would like to start now, so please have a seat and
Yeah, we are very happy to today speak about Circularity in the fashion industry Here at Republica at the fashion tech
My name is France Prince. I've been working for many years To bring sustainability on the fashion stage organizing trade shows and conferences and Right now I'm not so much involved in fashion anymore, but I am still very committed to the sustainability cause
Yeah, so I am moderating more than speaking We'll first have an introduction round of All of us and then we'll have a
Discussion about circularity in the fashion industry and Also space to ask questions or bring about your thoughts Yeah To start just with a very small introduction about what actually is this circularity thing
It's not about holding hands and Singing songs in a circle it's It's a quite a broad
vision For not only the fashion industry, but for yeah thinking the way we make we consume we produce we do things in our whole society in our whole economy like
creating a shift from Linear approach I just oh I want to do this I buy this product and when I'm ready with it, I throw it in the trash this kind of Linear mentality we have still nowadays Towards mentality where every product is already thought in a way that it's
Becoming the next thing where you think like the whole picture and not just like, okay, we're gonna do this and We're ready and then we throw it away like fast consume hyper consume and then
a dead end and until now a lot of sustainability Approaches also had this kind of okay. We're gonna improve things. Oh, there's a new thing Let's do this this way But in the end a lot of these solutions are like like not thought until the end. Let's
Take an example The recycling of plastics of PET bottles into clothing which on the one hand has a Is a very nice idea Okay Let's take one product make another product of it and then but then the result is also that we have a lot of
Microplastics in the environment in our drinking water every time we put a garment Made out of synthetic fibers into the washing machine it loses thousands of microfibers directly into our drinking water, so
We have to think about all these things and not just about okay, let's improve a bit and Let's sell it on the market. So yeah That just to give you like a braid of a frame. So Yeah, let's start with Maya
please introduce yourself and Tell us what you Have been working on and what is your? approach towards circular
fashion Okay, so my name is Maya Saliba. I have a background in fashion design and in graphic design and Circular economy for a while now I Think I have been really interested in ethical questions since a very long time
I've been working with NGOs giving workshops for Children who have difficult backgrounds like Palestinian camps and so on in Beirut and Well to continue with the sustainable
Focus that I had I did a master's degree at S mode Berlin in Sustainability and fashion and I just graduated a few months back But I have been so the last few projects that I did are completely circular focus so I worked with different levels of circularity and
At the moment. I'm taking part with OSCE days Which is An open platform for circular economy that is gonna happen now in Berlin from the 9th until the 13th of June Okay, so this OSCE days this open source
Economy days they take place all around the world. I understood It's an international event so it happens in very various cities around the world and this time it's Berlin time In June, okay, please speak a bit closer to yeah
We and you have you're working then in in a group of people to to find solutions in the in the fashion Well, OSCE days is about circular economy in general so there's going to be different fields and
It's going to be the whole circular economy in the different industries But I am taking part and I'm responsible for the textile part and we're going to talk about it At one in this afternoon in the meetup about circular economy with last Zimmerman
So if you want to join you're welcome to pass by and we can discuss this I've one more question you worked on a so-called critical studies on capitalism and sustainability and you said You've wrote there about the paradox between fast fashion and sustainability
and you had an approach of a solution towards democratic sustainability and Can you Tell us a bit more about that and the connection of that vision to
circularity, yes, so the idea of my critical study the main vision that I had is How to normalize sustainable values so how to make sustainability The norm instead of a niche market and I was thinking about who could be the right conductor who could be the ambassador
to spread sustainable values and So I came to the conclusion that fast fashion and mass market are maybe one of one of the experts at engaging with a worldwide mass you have products from fast fashion and mass market in every household all around the world and
So I chose them as a possible conductor and I was thinking about how can I have a business argument for mass market and for fast fashion so that they could introduce circular economy as a business model because at the end if
worldwide common laws are not implemented and if consumers perspective is still really I I Would say a Western middle-class Focus now when it comes to sustainability if you really want to spread it all around the world
I thought the the we could learn a lot from mass market and this is where I I thought that instead of having fashion for all why not shift for sustainability for all and This was the main Reason why I chose these words so it would be democratic sustainability just as democratic fashion
Okay, and you worked also on your own collection a Circular collection. Yes. I did two projects that dealt with circularity, so I really experimented with different levels of circularity, so I went from
organic products to Recyclable compostable cradle to cradle and I really worked on Starting with the end of a product, which is quite weird when you come from a fashion background, usually you start with Creativity and design and how it's going to look on someone and here I have to think of the death of my product
before I even designed it and this is where it was super interesting and super exciting at the same time, but very Challenging and as well I think the whole circular system is so challenging because it really needs the right infrastructure
So it's really great to think of hey, we're gonna recycle or we're gonna compose but then if you don't have an infrastructure for it a return system to get it back to the company to Compost it or to recycle it then it's also doesn't make much sense
So I think it was super interesting to experiment with it But I think there's a lot to do yet and personally I've done a little step But there's a lot coming Okay. Thank you then Rebecca Tell us a bit about what you have been working on. What is your background? What brought you here on this stage?
And I'm not from fashion design industry actually, I'm an architect a Brazilian architect and but I'm a maker too, so I am totally involved with the maker movement and
I work with maker space in Rio and we are we have a Be a hacking Club there, so we are producing kombucha and I don't know if you know about kombucha, but it's like a biofilm Made by bacterias and yeast and you are just trying to understand about this material
And what we can do with it. So we are not experts in this subject, but we are just experimenting on it but my background came from architecture and I work with design too and everything related with just a digital fabrication and I'm 3d printer teacher. I
teach this to like kids and I work with wearables and how to mix high-tech with low-tech for example doing some wearables with 3d printing and embroidery or Coding and processing with I don't know crochet. So mixing these two
different levels of technology And you also worked with a bio lab Yes in Olavi the maker space that I work we have a Bio lab, I'm not working. I'm not a biologist. I'm not working in this area there, but I
came here to represent the this maker space and I'm start to understand more about this material and I've been like fascinated about it because it's Has so many so much potential and I start to
Send these two chemistry professors in the University of Argentina to see it in the microscope and understand a little bit more about the composition of it and how can we use it Here, I don't know for other for other Industries or even in fashion. Mm-hmm. Can you maybe show us and tell us a bit more about how it's
Created and what qualities? So well, this is the kombucha actually the Kombucha is normally known as a tea. It's it's called the ely share of life. It's a very probiotic and
There there are a lot of health benefits in this tea and it's a team made of water a green tea sugar Maybe a little bit of vinegar. I
Can improve it and change it a little and you need all these ingredients and with scooby you need the scooby that it's the the symbiosis colony of Eastern bacteria And you need this to start your kombucha tea and your fabric and after you have the tea
you have to put there I don't know for 30 minute 30 days and The bacteria in these they're gonna eat the tea and the sugar and they're gonna produce a kind of mushroom that's made by cellulose and
in the end you can take this these mushroom and put it in a piece of wood for a few days and Because it's made at 90% of water it the water gonna evaporate and you're gonna have a thin like a vegetable leather in the end Actually, it's a really simple
Very simple and easy process that you can do at your home. You can grow your own At kombucha tea and kombucha fabric, too okay, and Until now you experimented with that in the lab. Is there any Is there any like contact to the market already like in?
producing things with a fashion brand or I think actually we use the Protocol the open protocol that Susan Lee that's a British designer. She put it on the internet She totally opened it this this recipe and her experience in this process
And we started with her process with her recipe, but now We are trying new things. We are trying to do this with strawberry tea It's like give us like a pink leather more or less, but we are discovering that It the process change it a little bit and the material change it, too
But I don't think now kombucha is totally in the market or can be in the next two years Everybody gonna wear kombucha clothes I don't think that I think the most important part of this is the process because you change The word you change the word fabrication to cultivation
So you if you can grow something at your home and then wear it You can grow something else and can grow something and mushroom and build your house or you can I don't know Grow another kind of textile and and do some clothes, but kombucha is a really
New material kombucha fabric so we need a lot of research on it because it's not waterproof If you are using it on the street and starts to rain If you're gonna start to observe the water and you probably be naked so it's not so good choose it now
Okay, and Do you think this material could like be a Solution to close the loop to make the textile the fashion industry more
Circular more sustainable I think This process actually Give us a perspective that We can bring the user to the to the whole process So he can be part of the of the circular process and he can understand
Each step of this process and when the user understand the whole process The Industry have to change because he became a controller He starts to control that he can say I don't agree with your process and I don't want to use your clothes because you work
This way because I know how the process is So I believe for example, if not, I don't know if everybody knows about how food industries I really believe 90% of the world would be vegetarian because we just prefer to forget about the process and just see the final product and when you put the use the user in the middle of the put in the
in the process and if the user is in the end that the the protagonist on this You change the industry in a way because the industry has to adapt to the user and to what the values of the user so in the end We have a more fair more democratic more sustainable
industry because The process is really new for everybody. Mm-hmm. Okay Yeah, I have one more question about like you also in your Makerspace you are also working with
with more technologies and More kind of wearables and how How do you See this working towards a more circular
in our makerspace It's like a big platform for everybody that likes the maker movement and like to want to be part of it, so it's it's like a Open place that you can have different courses and workshops and clubs we have a biohacking club or have the 3d printing club and we have I
I created a course there that's called sewing high-tech sewing That makes the the high technology with low technology and for example for this we did the workshop yesterday and we Put it together the kombucha fabric and some wearable components. We put it with lily pad
That's a kind of Arduino Pressure sensor some LEDs and a battery and as we see with this with the conductive thread and in the end, I think it's When you are talking about wearables or other another kind of technology
In now in this moment, you are just bringing people to the to this do-it-yourself movement You are empowered in your if you have people that knows how can they do everything they need? They are much more conscious of everything of what I need of the the ways that they produce of
The whole process how it works and In the end wearables are I love them because it's a way to to I don't know something that we just Normally used to see like in television and we we don't know how television works But we have one and we don't know nothing what is inside there and I think
Everything related with this kind of maker movement and wearables and this kind of technology brings up Like how to understand how it works and make us really Make us near to this kind of processes and
Industry so in the end we became we all became makers because we can do Everything that we not everything but many things that you need when you when you learn how to 3d print something You don't have to go and buy some vase because you need it you can just pretend that your home or if you need to
You don't have if your television is broken. You don't have to change it. You can just fix it. So you you You you cut a little bit this process of using it fashion fast fashion and fast consuming and you just try to
Understand more about what you are using and what you are buying and what you are consuming and in the end, it's much more conscious And sustainable in a way. Okay. Thank you very much So I'm at the please introduce yourself
I'm Annette. I'm also a fashion designer. I studied Like a few years ago already fashion design After that, I was working in the sportswear industry for different sportswear brands Yeah, because I'm always Interested in what can a garment do to the wearer? So what technology can be implemented in the fabric?
So this was my field of interest but then of course the topic sustainability Came up and
Yeah, I couldn't really implement that in the work daily work at the companies So I did another master's study in Basel in Switzerland interdisciplinary design and Yeah in this master thesis I gathered
What materials are? Out there what's going on like also the kombucha material for example Or like the milk yarn and Yeah, like ananas fiber leather all these kind of stuff. I was like collecting
What's out there? and then I did also some try outs with mycelium products Or Try to Grow material out of mycelium and I have all this stuff right there if you want to have a look later on
So I can maybe explain about the mycelium or because they I also tried the kombucha but it's yeah, it's more or less the same Yeah, we just found out that the color is a bit darker on yours
So yeah, it's interesting to see my samples as well But I was not continuing really with that because as you said it's not waterproof So but it's yeah, as you said, it's about the process and about the idea. How about Growing your Material for garments so that you can also grow exactly your pattern you want to have so you don't have any waste anymore
And yes, it's not working at the moment, but just the idea and the process it's it's really interesting So to the mycelium product
yeah, it's just like a mushroom root and I used for example straw and cork as a base material and Then yeah, you just Need to wait like two three weeks or something and
then the The roots are we are growing and connecting and I did a form Like a shoe sole because the idea was maybe it's working for a shoe Yeah, so I also have the samples over there It's very lightweight material and as well not working for water
Very fragile at the moment. So there are lots of projects interaction of I think Maybe skateboards or something. They are working on as well shoes and but mainly for styro for like packaging material for this it could really work because
yeah, you just can throw it on the Bio waste and it's yeah degrading. Yeah and You have been working on Collection
With these how do you see this when you think about the market? How how? How can these kind of more experimental approaches? Read have an outreach have an impact Yeah, it was quite hard for me as a designer as Rebecca already said that you somehow start
maybe with the end and not with the creative part and Then you always have maybe in these biomaterials the so-called Echo look which you maybe don't want to achieve as a designer. So yeah it's not that easy to
Add to find then as well the look that you want to achieve but then it's a new material. So Yeah, it's taking a long time to it's a long way to find the material the properties of the material and then you can Maybe adapt to the look and do what you what you really want to do
It's yeah, I did like a gathering in my collection and we are trying not to achieve the Echo look so cold. So I also work with polyester because I'm from the sportswear industry
so this is also the idea of leaving maybe the advantages of some fabrics Behind and then maybe the look is also not what you want So there's yeah still a lot to do on on the materials Okay, so we have a few minutes left
I was surprised about how fast the time goes Yeah, so maybe to to close the circle here To maybe you can all like give in a few words your
your vision How this How this circular idea can become The new normal, I think it will I think the main
The main shifts that need to be to have to happen are first in the mindsets and Second I would say To really start to work together to stop thinking that the textile industry is by itself
I think it's all the industries that need to work together That it's everyone that needs to shift from the idea of competition to the idea of collaboration and Yeah, I think this is what maybe could open doors for circular economy, yeah, I think
Maybe all the industry should start to change now because it's totally The industry that work with the finite resources they have to rethink their processes and how they
understand The production and the materials that they use Because it will be impossible and unsustainable to keep in this way. So I Would love to see and imagine our words that the users are part of the process and we can we can
Normally and easily use your materials so we can get the empowerment of the of the users and be a material and Use and get a more easily a psycho loop in the end
Yeah, I think I wish also that the yeah like bigger companies work more towards this direction not only For the marketing reason which is sometimes the case I Like for example the project of the fry tuck bags the clothing of them because they really went into
all the aspects or local sourced Materials and then they have the new patent for the for the metal button. So and and they really
explained everything and It's not just a sustainable product it's really thought through I would say so I think that it's a good example and but also the the mass market is always a Challenge because for example the PT
Bottles, as you said the rebound effect that people maybe think ah, it's perfect We can use fabric so we don't need to think if we use it or not. We can drink a lot of Water out of PT bottles for example, so yeah Okay. Thank you so much the way
unfortunately, we don't have time anymore for a Q&A, but Please if you afterwards have any questions to any of us Come in front also Have a look around at exhibition and that you are exhibiting and You as well no, oh you are there at one at the OC days
That's also something if you're interested or more in this circular Economy thing both in fashion or in other industries. There's This thing at one o'clock and also if you don't make it this this is a global network of people of makers of
Designers of people from all aspects working together to To talk about challenges and create open-source solutions or share information with each other. It's quite interesting. Have a look
It's happening in Berlin in June So that's also a possibility to continue Working towards this circular fashion industry yeah, thank you so much and