Brands can reduce 51.5% carbon emissions by renewing products: TRW

Brands can achieve an average reduction of 51.5 per cent in carbon emissions by renewing an existing product instead of producing a new one, according to a new report by The Renewal Workshop (TRW). Renewal is the process TRW created to restore apparel, bags and home goods to standardised conditions enabling more uses over longer periods of time.

This year’s TRW report ‘Leading Circular 2021’ highlights the voices of activists who are cutting through the noise on what the industry should be paying attention to when it comes to carbon and circularity, TRW said in a media release.

Dominique Drakeford’s essay states how the current approach to circular continues “the colonial control of power dynamics while keeping the veil of ‘Doing good for people and planet’ as a facade of noble action.”

Brands can achieve an average reduction of 51.5 per cent in carbon emissions by renewing an existing product instead of producing a new one, according to a new report by The Renewal Workshop (TRW). Renewal is the process TRW created to restore apparel, bags and home goods to standardised conditions enabling more uses over longer periods of time.

Liz Ricketts essay, She Can No Longer Carry Us, is a first-person account of the impact in Ghana of US over production. Her concluding words must be heard. “Just because you do not see and feel the weight of fashion’s excess does not mean it is not there closing in on us and destroying the industry we love.”

re/make authors Ayesha Barenblat, Elizabeth Cline and Chelsey Grasso address the myth that people can recycle their way out of the climate crisis. “In general, brands have to stop taking the low-hanging fruit of recycling and work towards the reuse and product life extension aspects of circularity.”

“Climate change is the largest existential crisis facing humanity. It is this urgency that frames the Leading Circular 2021 report on Carbon and Circularity,” said co-founders Nicole Bassett and Jeff Denby. “We are calling on every apparel and textile brand to commit to displacing 10 per cent of new production over the next 5 years and invest those resources into renewal.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)