http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2567-3426
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Abstract
Circular economy (CE) models are driving the next restructuring of global textile production and secondary markets, but their socio-political configurations are largely untested. New textile recycling technologies have the potential to redirect material resource flows, disrupt global secondary markets and reconfigure the waste hierarchy. Mainstream CE modelling tends to include people simply as product users in a system of material flows governed by large brands. However, anthropological research into collaborations of small-scale urban designer-producers show how they are using CE principles to prototype new regional cloth economies that aim to reproduce the types of societies they wish to live in.
Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thanks to all of those designers, makers and recyclers who took time out of busy schedules to show me around their businesses, reflect upon their experiences and share their visions for the future of the fashion industry. I am grateful to Susanne Kuechler at the Department of Anthropology, UCL for an honorary research fellowship that provided valuable access to library resources, and to Rebecca Earley at Textiles Environment Design, for inviting me to become a Visiting Fellow at the University of the Arts London. I would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and the editors Jennifer Le Zotte and Karen Tranberg Hansen for their overall support.
Notes
1. As a broad spectrum of anthropologists, political economists and textile historians describe; see for example Weiner and Schneider, Cloth and Human Experience; Küchler and Miller, Clothing as Material Culture; Lemire, Fashion’s Favourite; Mukerji, From Graven Images.
2. Morgan, The True Cost.
3. see Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt; Norris, “Introduction: Trade and Transformations.”
4. Siegle, To Die For; Brooks, Clothing Poverty; Hoskins, Stitched Up; Greenpeace International, Toxic Threads; Norris, “The Limits of Ethicality.”
5. CIRAIG, “Circular Economy.”
6. Ibid., 5.
7. “Project MainStream Helping Scale.”
8. “Circular Economy Reports & Publications.”
9. “Circular Economy System Diagram.”
10. EEF, “Materials for Manufacturing”; McKinsey & Co., “Resource Revolution”; McKinsey & Co., “Manufacturing the Future.”
11. European Commission, “Closing the Loop.”
12. Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “Towards the Circular Economy 1.”
13. Daly, Towards a Steady-State Economy.
14. Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth.
15. US Chamber of Commerce Foundation Corporate Citizenship Centre, “Trash to Treasure.”
16. Hobson, “Closing the Loop or Squaring the Circle?,” 89.
17. Ibid., 90.
18. Gregson and Crang, “Materiality and Waste.”
19. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.
20. Gregson and Crang, “Materiality and Waste,” 1027.
21. Douglas, Purity and Danger.
22. Gregson and Crang, “Materiality and Waste,” 1027.
23. Gille, From the Cult of Waste.
24. Buehler, “Inflected Objects #2 Circulation.”
25. “OSCEdays.”
26. Hart, Laville, and Cattani, The Human Economy.
27. Budde, interview, June 2016.
28. Von Busch, ‘Fashion-Able.”
29. Fuad-Luke, Hirscher, and Moebus, “Open Fashion & Code,” 189.
30. “Worn Again Joins Forces.”
31. Oakdene Hollins Ltd, SATC Ltd, and NIRI Ltd, “Clothing Recycling Report”; Morley, Bartlett, and McGill, “Maximising the Reuse and Recycling”; Norris, “Shoddy Rags and Relief Blankets.”
32. All figures provided in Rhoades, “Keynote: Materials.”
33. A few well-known closed-loop solutions have been developed over the past few years, which currently rely on returning garments to dedicated recycling factories in single locations. For example, Patagonia’s Common Threads programme enables their fleeces to be recycled by the Japanese company Teijin into polyester filament. Mud jeans, based in Amsterdam, is pioneering the idea of circulating denim, running a leasing scheme for jeans, which can then turned into sweaters through mechanical yarn reclamation in a factory in Spain. Dutch aWEARness has created a circular supply chain for its own workwear made from 100% recyclable polyester, Returnity®, which recycles clothing in a factory in Tunisia.
34. The structural impact of the international free-market trade in second-hand clothing on local developing economies has been widely debated, in particular to what extent it conflicts with the aims and scope of international development policies. See Brooks, “Stretching Global Production Networks”; Norris, “The Limits of Ethicality”; Norris, “Introduction: Trade and Transformations”; Hansen, “Controversies.” The appropriation of second-hand styles as cultural resource are comprehensively discussed in Hansen, Salaula.
35. Braungart and McDonough, Cradle to Cradle.
36. Ibid.
37. Niinimäki et al., “Colours in a Circular Economy.”
38. “Could FIBERSORT Change the Textiles“.
39. “Circle Market: Fuelling the Recovery.”
40. Hawley, “Digging for Diamonds”; Crang et al., “Rethinking Governance”; Norris, “Introduction: Trade and Transformations”; Brooks, “Riches from Rags or Persistent Poverty?”; Abimbola, “Managing Information Asymmetry”; Botticello, “Between Classification, Objectification and Perception”; Milgram, “Activating Frontier Livelihoods.”
41. International Trade Administration, “Worn (Used) Clothing.”
42. see for example Brooks, “East Africa’s Ban.”
43. “Mistra Future Fashion.”
44. Earley and Goldsworthy, “Designing for Fast and Slow.”
45. Fletcher, Craft of Use.
46. Politowicz and Goldsworthy, “A.S.A.P. (Paper Cloth).”
47. Earley, “Fast Refashion – Textile Toolbox.”
48. Gregson et al., “Doing the ‘Dirty Work’ .”
49. Crang et al., “Rethinking Governance.”
50. Raworth, Doughnut Economics.
51. “Circular Cities Network.”
52. Harvey, Jensen, and Morita, Infrastructures and Social Complexity.
53. The data for this section were largely gathered during a field visit to Bristol in February 2016 and ongoing conversations with Harrison, followed up with interviews with Harrison and Hague during winter 2016/17
54. “Bristol Food Policy Council.”
55. “Textile Arts Centre.”
56. “Made in NYC.”
57. “Bristol Textile Quarter.”
58. Higginson has documented her challenge to make all of her own clothing in a year at http://mademywardrobe.com/blog/ (accessed June 14, 2017).
59. Silvestri, “Keynote.”
60. “The Bristol Weaving Mill.”
61. Harrison, “Fashion and Community.”
62. Ibid., 247.
63. Whitson-Smith and Harrison, “Mending Fashion.”
64. Hopkins, The Transition Handbook.
65. This equitable anonymity is in contrast to other initiatives that focus on asymmetrical exchange when giving a charitable gift, for example the London-based charity Hubbub’s scheme whereby mothers package up their babies’ outgrown clothing and give them to less well-off mothers at organised meet-ups.
66. Zee, “Swap till You Drop.”
67. Harrison, “Fashion and Community,” 249.
68. Twigger Holroyd, “Shifting Perceptions: The Re-knit Revolution.”
69. The multiple strategies women adopt in order to make a living in Berlin’s independent creative fashion economy is discussed in McRobbie, Be Creative, Chapter 5.
70. Norris, “The Limits of Ethicality.”
71. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
72. Lakoff, The All New.
73. Crompton, “Common Cause.”
74. Lakoff gave a keynote at the online Disruption Innovation Festival 2016: https://www.thinkdif.co/headliners (accessed January 15, 2017).
75. Goffman, Frame Analysis.
76. Miller, “Materiality: An Introduction.”
77. Appadurai, “The Migration of Objects.”
78. Gell, Art and Agency.
79. Küchler, “Threads of Thought,” 26.
80. Marx, Capital, Chapter 1.
81. Graeber, “Afterword: The Apocalypse of Objects,” 283.
82. Ibid., 280.
83. Norris, “Clothing in Circulation.”
84. Botsman and Rogers, What’s Mine Is Yours.
85. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,” 222.
86. Weiner and Schneider, Cloth and Human Experience, 2–3.