Interviews

The UK discards 1 million tonnes of textiles every year, with about a third ending up in landfill or incineration, and the football sector is a big contributor to this. Lindsay Pressdee, Senior Lecturer in Department of Materials Faculty of Science and Engineering at University of Manchester, talks about the urgent need to tackle sportswear garment waste on a footing at par with fast fashion.

Swedish nonprofit Axfoundation has been running the Swedish Wool Initiative, which aims for zero wool waste. The project has launched the Swedish Wool Standard, the first Swedish classification system for wool. Johan Sidenmark, Project Manager, Circular Economy, speaks at length about Swedish wool, and the Standard in particular.

Swedish gamechanger TreeToTextile was recently awarded the ITMF Start-up Award for creating a biobased textile fibre through an innovative chemical process that refines cellulose from wood and other cellulosic sources. Chief Executive Officer Roxana Barbieru talks alternative fibres.

OnceMore—the world’s first large-scale process for recycling blended fabrics—uses a proprietery process that combines post-consumer textile waste with renewable wood from responsibly managed forests to produce high-quality textile pulp. Åsa Degerman, Project Leader for OnceMore at forest industry group Södra talks recycling.

The Reet Aus mission is to minimise the ecological footprint of the fashion industry by applying industrial upcycling — producing clothing from pre-production leftover fabrics. texfash.com talks to the visionary designer to know more. 

Knof is a Slovenian social enterprise with a focus on circularity and sustainability. Based in the town of Krško, it runs six Stara Šola reuse boutiques, using a market model that has positive effects on the environment, the local economy and the community. Director Mojca Žganec Metelko and Coordinator of Reuse Stores Nina Goriaeva in a conversation about the Stara Šola saga.

Solidaridad has just published a paper on the interplay between cotton and climate change, which shows that in the near future almost every cotton producing country will be negatively affected by climate change. The paper’s author, Tamar Hoek, Senior Policy Director (Sustainable Fashion), responds to questions related to the paper.

The Sewn Products Equipment & Suppliers of the Americas (SPESA) played host to the 38th World Fashion Convention of the International Apparel Federation (IAF). The President of the SPESA, Michael McDonald, takes time out to tell texfash.com how the event went by, and the context in which it was held in the US.

The just-concluded 38th World Fashion Convention at Philadelphia delved deep into issues plaguing the textile-apparel-fashion industry. Matthijs Crietee, Secretary-General, International Apparel Federation (IAF), sheds light on the roadmap chalked out to help industry achieve its Net Zero goals.

As one of the biggest events to be held in Latin America, PI Apparel Medellin this year is significant both for the region itself as well as the overall global context in which it is set to kick off on Wednesday. Two people in the thick and thin of things set the tone: Carmen Caballero, President of ProColombia, and Monica Afonso, Conference Producer at PI Apparel.