Every year, the leftovers and waste material from garment and fabric production is huge. Nobody knows exactly how much material is thrown away each year, but if the estimates of Ann Runnel are to be believed, the numbers are incredibly high. If this unresourceful behaviour could be prevented, the effect on all parts of the supply chain could be huge, efficiency could rise, as could profits-while being more sustainable, and ecologically as well as socially responsible. Estonian entrepreneur Ann Runnel plans to do just that: her idea is to implement a marketplace for industrial-scale reuse and recycling of production leftovers. Fibre2Fashion spoke to her about her goals for the project, her current challenges and the impact her project could have on the global scale of textile production and sustainability.
What is the goal of your project?
The goal of Reverse-Resources is to help garment factories in Asia be more transparent about the leftovers of their production for the brands whom they produce for. We aim to create synergies and new business opportunities based on leftover materials. We want brands, producers and recyclers to be able to reuse and recycle whatever is left from their production. As brands are now one after another taking responsibility for the post-consumer leftovers, we are doing a similar thing on the production side. But instead of physically gathering and recycling these materials, our focus is on developing enabling software and improving data movement about leftover materials.
What was the biggest breakthrough for you in this project?
Winning the Global Change Award has opened many doors. It used to be very difficult to explain why what we are trying to do is necessary and can be highly profitable until we didn't have any real case studies to present. Having H&M as a market leader say it out loud that 'yes, this is something we need to do' made a lot of difference to our credibility for potential customers.
What applications do you see for the marketplace in the future?
The long-term goal is to help garment factories reach zero-waste production by having a good output for each different type of leftover they are dealing with: from fabrics, cutting scraps, buttons and zippers to broken hangers. But we are moving step by step. We started with a marketplace and matchmaking for cutting scraps for recycling and dead stock fabrics for reuse in production. It's already a big challenge to create value for these leftover categories. We've calculated that in China, India and Bangladesh alone there are enough leftover fabrics and fibres (from garment production alone) to produce another 6 billion garments. We would love to see all this waste reused or recycled. Our ultimate aim is to get these resources circulating in the best possible way.
What is your own background?
I studied economics and entrepreneurship. The research about how eco-innovation functions and especially the focus on the textiles industry has been both my hobby and personal interest area for seven years.
What steps have you taken so far?
The company was registered in 2014, but it was a year later when things actually started to move. We were accepted in the Climate Launchpad programme, an accelerator programme, that helped us refine our message and develop the first prototype. Because of that we were able to apply and win the Global Change Award by H&M. Since then we have launched a pilot with H&M and three of their suppliers in China. We are preparing another pilot in Bangladesh in cooperation with suppliers of Tesco.
What impact-economical, environmental, in people's lives-can this project have if you succeed?
Reusing and recycling take significantly less energy and water to create a t-shirt compared to conventional production from virgin fibres. I only have approximate numbers from research of others, but the scale of the impact is huge-turning 250 tonnes of cotton leftovers into new garments could save one trillion litres of water in cotton farming. With polyester, the numbers are different, as it's more energy-intensive. But in general, 250 tonnes of leftovers is an amount coming from 4-5 large suppliers in one month. H&M alone is working with 820 suppliers. So the potential to create a really big impact with this project is realistic, if we manage to prove the business value of our software and scale it up. Economical up- and recycling itself make a lot of sense. We've seen how it's possible to make five times more profit from the leftover materials if they are reused or recycled instead of sold locally.
Are there companies that have shown interest in your project?
Yes, we are seeing a lot of interest. In addition to H&M, we have agreed on cooperation with Tesco. There is a clear feedback about the idea that the industry sector in general needs some kind of standardised system for managing the production leftovers in a better way. I hope our software can create value in this process. It's all about creating cooperation and synergy between brands, suppliers, recyclers and upcyclers.
How did you conceive of the idea to start an online market for textile leftovers?
I was very interested in the eco-innovation issues-how are some companies able do business in an environmentally positive, profitable and social way? I was always interested in the question of scaling up the positive impacts. I used to work with an upcycling fashion designer and this brought me to see how upcycling was started in Beximco, the largest garment producer in Bangladesh. I analysed the economic benefits of this cooperation and this brought me to starting this company to solve the biggest obstacle: the data movement problem.
What is the biggest challenge you are facing with the project at the moment?
Our biggest challenge is to carry out a few successful pilot cases that can prove the concept, the value of it for the suppliers as well as brands, and to be able to reach the conclusion that can be scaled up fast enough.
Published on: 07/11/2016
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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