New Zealand’s fashion and textile industry is taking a significant step forward, addressing climate change and improving how clothes are brought to market and managed at end-of-use, by implementing a Textile Product Stewardship Scheme co-designed by the industry.
The clothing and textile industry is one of the largest and most impactful industries in the world. Over 100 billion garments are produced worldwide each year with only a fraction ever recycled. By 2050 it is forecasted to consume more than 26% of the carbon budget associated with a 2°C pathway. Their outsized impacts to volume makes textile products both a priority and an opportunity for decarbonisation.
Textile waste is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing waste streams with more than 220,000 tonnes ending up in landfills each year. Representing a gross waste of a high value, carbon intensive resource. Market expectation is shifting as more and more people become aware of the impacts of the clothes they wear. Businesses are facing increasing ‘make it, take it’ demand, the expectation that customers can return garments at their end-of-use.
Product Stewardship is a preferred tool of government and a key component of the Waste Minimisation Act (2008), which enables the establishment of voluntary and mandatory Product Stewardship programs to reduce waste and help transition the market from a linear to a circular economy. The Textile Product Stewardship Project sits within the Textile Reuse Programme which was established in 2016 aligning industry players in a shared vision and commitment to a circular economy for clothing and textiles in New Zealand. Driving large scale, collaborative projects creating new technologies and solutions to radically reduce the environmental impacts of what we wear. The Textile Product Stewardship Project is a multi year project which has been co-designed by NZ’s fashion and textile industry, for the industry and Aotearoa to create a low emissions, circular economy for clothing and textiles onshore. Funded by The Ministry for the Environment’s Te Pūtea Whakamauru Para – Waste Minimisation Fund’s (WMF) 2019 funding round and the Textile Reuse Programme foundation partners, Alsco NZ, Barkers Clothing, Deane Apparel, Usedfully and Wellington City Council.
