On Tuesday 4th December, Vohs&Co hosted a Textile Sustainability Event at the Century Club, Soho.
The purpose of the event was to raise awareness of the environmental impact the fashion industry is causing and discussing how new developments to technologies can be potential solutions to the problems we are facing and help to make the fashion industry more circular. Here, we heard talks from Nigel Salter (SB&Co) who is a leading international sustainability consultant and Jose Royo (Tejidos Royo) a leader within the textile industry, offering a vertical, 360 ° sustainable manufacturing process to clients in over 30 countries worldwide. On the day, we were joined by a number of professionals from the likes of Marks & Spencer,River Island, Amazon, Long Tall Sally, Boden, Seven Feet Apart, ASOS, Burberry and many more – all focused on having a more sustainable approach to their involvement within the industry.
Sustainability and Social responsibility is becoming an ever growing and important area for brands, retailers and suppliers and recent research and findings are putting pressure on businesses to change the way they manufacture clothing.
Nigel Salter shed light on just how important it is that we reduce the waste generated from the current ‘take-make-dispose’ model we see across the industry. In order to for the industry to survive, we need to adopt a circular approach in which clothes are designed from the outset to never end up as waste.
In 2010, over 150 billion garments were produced – enough for every human to have 20 new pieces. In 2018,where that figure is undoubtedly higher, 85% of the garments produced end up in landfill.
Nigel also spoke about the changes we are already seeing and what we can expect for the future. Although many of the facts shrouding sustainability are very negative,we are starting to notice changes that are only expected to increase and improve in the future.
For example, we may start to see fully combustible garments on the high street, the idea of leasing clothes rather than purchasing them may become a reality and leather made from mushrooms instead of cows may become the ‘norm’.
On the day,we are also joined by Jose Royo from Tejidos Royo, who discussed their innovations around textile sustainability - in particular their newly developed Water Free Indigo Dyeing and Fabric Recycling processes. Tejidos Royo have been championing sustainability within the textile industry with their 360 °sustainable philosophy that covers all levels: social, economic, labour and environmental. The planet is becoming increasingly affected by pollution to the land, air and water which this industry heavily contributes too.
As a result of Royo’s actions to be increasingly sustainable, they have created the worlds’first ever Water Free Indigo Dyeing – revolutionising the way we manufacture denim garments. Instead of using water to dye the yarn, the Dry Indigo Dye technique uses foam – eliminating the need for water.
In the last three years, Royo have seen savings of 510 tonnes of CO2 and 500,000m3 of water – the equivalent of 200 Olympic swimming pools!
Towards the end of the event, a Q&A session was hosted by Nicole Vohs, where a number of questions into the Dry Indigo Technique, sustainability as a whole and recruiting into sustainable/ethical positions were asked. In recent months there has been an increase in the number and the importance of positions where people are solely responsible with ensuring the business is fully ethical and sustainable– something which we can expect to see increase over the coming years
