Design for dis-assembly is rarely part of the design process
In May, textile technology startup Evrnu and global jeanswear leader Levi Strauss & Co announced the creation of the world's first jeans made from regenerated postconsumer cotton waste. Using a patent-pending recycling technology, discarded consumer waste was converted into renewable fibre. The first prototype, in the form of a pair of iconic Levi's 511 jeans, was said to represent a future where textile waste would be reduced considerably and cotton garments could be continually regenerated to create a more sustainable world. Till that moment, there hadn't been a viable solution that could effectively transform old clothes into new without compromising quality or strength. But now, discarded cotton clothing can be turned into a new cotton-like fibre, creating new possibilities. Subir Ghosh spoke to Paul Dillinger, vice-president of product innovation, Levi Strauss & Co and Stacy Flynn, CEOof Evrnu about the landmark technological breakthrough which can create a circular economy that extends the life of cotton and eliminates waste by breathing new life into used clothing. Dillingerand Flynn dwell at length on the prototype and the roadmap ahead.
The statement issued by Evrnu and Levi’s on the launch of the prototype talked about a circular economy. Are you planning to keep the concept/ technology to yourself? Or, are you thinking of expanding to other brands and companies too?
PD: Levi’s is deeply committed to research and development efforts that will reduce the resource impact of apparel manufacturing. With Evrnu, we see a potential solution to reduce overall impact of Levi Strauss & Co, and for the industry as a whole. Our goal is to be the first to market with regenerated cotton as a demonstration of sustainability leadership and commitment to our values, but true success means broad deployment of circular material streams throughout the industry.
SF: We currently have an early adopter programme and have two major US brands, including Levi Strauss & Co, signed into it. We are also in conversation with several other potential partners. We will not be keeping the concept and technology to ourselves; instead, we will be licensing and deploying it on behalf of the brand/ retailers.
This jeans, if I am not mistaken, makes use only of cotton waste. But with the world so much into manmade fibres as well as blended yarn, what do you see the scope for this product? I ask that since markets seem to be less about cotton products with every passing year.
PD: Our business is mainly about cotton, which makes up the majority of our products; so we’re focused on innovation in this area.
SF: We are working on the technology to do chemical separation for blended fibres on a molecular level. Right now we have the technology to deploy the breakdown of cotton, but are still working on the technology to scale blended fibre separation. With that said, a significant portion of waste that exists currently is in the form of 100 per cent cotton. In addition to 100 per cent post-consumer cotton, we can also break down pre-consumer garment waste, cut waste and shoddy/short staple cotton as well. We have tremendous amounts of feedstock from various cotton waste sources across the globe. Our technology has been designed with the goal of breaking down the most difficult fibres and blends, so we can make sure everything else can be broken down as well.
Note: While our goal with Levi’s is to eventually produce a 100 per cent recycled cotton jeans, the prototypes we recently introduced did contain a portion of virgin cotton, in conjunction with a majority of Evrnu fibre.
This a resource-intensive and investment-intensive process. How expensive is the new product likely to be? To be cost-effective, this has to work at a mass level, right?
PD: We're still in the very early stages of utilising this technology; so we really aren't able to make any predictions about the cost of a product like this at a larger scale. That said, we always look at whether or not an innovation like this is scalable and can be offered to consumers at a price point they are comfortable with.
SF: This is only true using conventional logic. We cannot comment on specifics, other than to say we do not believe that what you have stated to necessarily be true.
Evrnu-Levi's must have been deliberating on this technological innovation for a while. What was the exact trigger for working on this particular prototype?
PD: This partnership started with a conversation between myself and Evrnu over a year ago at the Sustainable Textile and Apparel Conference at FIT. The project evolved from there, and the first proof-ofconcept yardage came off the loom in February.
SF: Deliberation was actually quite quick with Levi's. Levi's had just finished an extensive environmental impact study and realised that 60 per cent of their negative impact comes from the fibre in their products. Considering Evrnu is a fibre technology company focusing on extreme reductions in impact, the deliberations and prototyping process was a natural fit, and went by quite quickly.
Could you share some details about the process itself? How long did it take for you to work on this? How many people were involved at your end? How much investment did it require?
PD: With any important or meaningful innovation, there is always some disruption to business as usual. That's why we chose to keep the team small at first and treated it as a design concept, rather than a supply chain initiative. It's given us an opportunity to incubate slowly and thoughtfully without any implications around scale or costing.
SF: We started researching the technology in 2011. My co-founder, Christopher Stanev, and I started by mapping out the textile/fashion system to figure out where the best point of intervention would be. In this process, I discovered two things:
The amount of resources required for fibre are staggering. Especially considering that 90 per cent of the apparel industry comprises polyester or cotton-both of which require a tremendous amount of natural resources to produce.
In the United States, we have a tremendous amount of waste around the apparel industry. After we put all the value and resources into textiles and apparel, consumers end up throwing away 80 per ent of their discarded clothing directly to landfills. The rest 20 per cent is recovered currently, and of the 20 per cent the way that it's being broken down and reused is inefficient and there is a great deal of room for improvement.
In 2014, we were able to do a benchtop sample taking cotton fibre, breaking it down to a liquid and re-extruding it using a syringe. From there we were able to scale up our process. We are now on our eighth prototype, we have a mini extrusion line running and it required a lot of collaboration between my co-founder and myself working together to develop the technology. Our own money constituted the majority of the initial investment for the first two years and we put in our own time for the first three years. Eventually, we started working with investors in 2015. We are declining at this time to specify the current amount of investment to date.
This certainly does not work without mass awareness. It's not just about the product; it is as much about consumers not dumping their used clothing in landfills. So, what is your communication / PR strategy going to be?
PD: Like I mentioned, we are still in the early stages of this technology and are not yet at the point of developing a broader marketing plan.
SF: We cannot comment on our PR/Communication strategy at this time.
There is also a paradox here, something that textile-apparel companies are grappling with. Recycle-reuse is fine. No one seems to work so much on reduce (w.r.t the problem of fast fashion). Your comments, please.
PD: At Levi Strauss & Co, we focus on making durable products that look good and that last. We encourage our consumers to care for their clothing more responsibly and to celebrate their own personal style, rather than following fast fashion trends. As a company, we still drive for profitable growth; but it is responsible, not negligent growth. By encouraging better garment care practices and long-term ownership, along sustainable technologies like Evrnu, we hope to resolve some of the tension that obviously exists between growth and sustainability.
SF: We are able to take waste, break it down and turn it into new fibre that is meaningful and of high enough quality to be used innew product. This means we canwork within the existing model of fast fashion, which is actually "style obsolescence with consumption as the key driver" (whereby theconsumer's ability to buy keeps the model intact), take waste that is a by product of that model, break it down and extrude it into new fibre for use in new garments for sale. This process enables us to take a destructive business model and turn it into a very powerful catalyst for positive environmental and human change. With that said, we are approaching our model from a business perspective and our technology is very much grounded in reality, how the world works currently, and accounts for existing business models such as fast fashion. Eventually, we can train and show that there is value in a new way of thinking about sustainability, but our model is not dependent on a substantial shift in current business practices.
One doesn't always end up with the exact product that one has in mind at the onset itself. One has to work on a trial-and-error basis. Could you tell us about some of the bottlenecks you ran into while working on the prototype?
PD: The prototype we've made together with Evrnu demonstrates that this technology is viable. It will be a long, iterative process to get us to a consumer experience that is indistinguishable from virgin cotton. The principal constraint now is scale-taking the technology out of the lab and into a manufacturing setting.
SF: One of the biggest bottlenecks we've run into was the initial funding to get the project off the ground. Since then we have been able to move quite efficiently and have run into very few major bottlenecks. All our work has been centred around (and tested on) post-consumer garment waste (the same feedstock we will use beyond the prototyping phase) but there have been no real technological bottlenecks we haven't been able to overcome within a few weeks.
The prototype is an excellent start. Now, how do you plan sourcing the discarded apparel so that the Levis 511 jeans can enter mass/ commercial production? Will consumers be able to enter a Levi's store with their old clothes?
PD: I'd recommend speaking with someone at Evrnu as they have more insight into sourcing the apparel.
SF: Levi's already employs a take back collection programme in their stores. We are working on our scaling plan with Levi's and at this point we can't comment on the specifics of that plan, including timing.
People have been talking about reduce-recycle-reuse for a long time now, in fact since the Rio Summit of 1992. Broadly speaking, why has it taken the world about 25 years to come up with solutions? Is technology slow in catching up with environmental degradation?
PD: Often, the design and manufacturing process only considers its role in the lifecycle of an object through the first few months of ownership by the consumer. The question of "what do we do with this now?" is generally only asked at the moment that we as consumers are ready to dispose of a garment. Design for disassembly or re-use is rarely part of the design process, and is not broadly taught at design schools. Although designers are fundamentally "problem solvers", we often wait until the problem becomes urgent before we address it. Sustainable design requires us to anticipate problems-often still years away-and then solve for an unknown future. When those solutions increase cost or complexity through the product creation process, they can very often be the first feature to be lost in the inevitable costing process. I think that is a large part of the problem we are facing, as well as limitations in technology. But I think if companies focus and prioritise sustainable design like we are piloting at Levi Strauss & Co, the possibilities have more promise. But we also need to enlighten the consumer so they are able to discern the products made by responsible companies. If both companies and consumers alike integrate sustainability into their lives more, both will win.
SF: I absolutely believe technology is slow in catching up with environmental degradation-no one is going to make a change unless they are forced to do so. CEOs of major brands and retailers around the world are now realising that their businesses' demands are projected to double between now and 2025 and we don't have the natural resources available to keep up with that growth in demand. They are actively asking their teams for their best solutions on how to solve these problems. Evrnu is one of those solutions. We are starting to see CEOs put mandates out to their teams surrounding the issue of sustainability and that is how we know that we are on the cusp of real change.
