They probably have a container of slowly accumulating items that customers have sent back. “There are a lot of take-back programs where brands have been doing this for years, but they’ve never hit the product minimum to do anything with what they are collecting. As such, there’s new potential for progress: If businesses work together, fiber-to-fiber recycling will be possible for a larger pool of brands.
Although traditional retailers like H&M and Uniqlo have offered limited run take-back programs for years, DTC online brands other than Reformation are only going there now. For many, convenience still wins when it comes to clothing that cannot be re-sold for a profit. Recycling as a service can be a useful way to engage consumers in seeing the value of their worn garments. We are working with SuperCircle to develop really strong relationships with the fiber recycling partners based on the category and to get a lot of other brands involved,” said Kathleen Talbot, Reformation’s chief sustainability officer and vp of operations. “With RefRecycling and the collaboration with SuperCircle, this is a first chance to collaborate across other brands that might be doing similar take-back programs with similar fibers or compositions. And they can see whether a donated piece was ultimately upcycled, recycled or downcycled on Reformation’s initiative website. In exchange for responsibly recycling, customers receive Reformation credit for future purchases: $25 for shoes, $15 for jeans, and $10 for sweaters and activewear. It then gets the items to best-in-class textile recycling partners which convert consumer waste into new fibers to use in new products. SuperCircle manages the tech interface, collection and sorting of items. Reformation retail location or request a shipping label online.
To participate, customers can drop off items at any U.S. Reformation previously worked on a RefRecycling program with Community Recycling in 2015. To help combat this issue, Reformation is launching RefRecycling, powered by SuperCircle, an experiential recycling program that was founded by the same people behind shoe brand Thousand Fell who worked together on their initial launch. In the U.S., over 16 million tons of textiles are tossed in the trash each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. T ypically, a brand must collect at least a ton of clothing in a particular fiber or fiber composition in order to process it.
One of the biggest issues with fiber-to-fiber recycling is that a large amount of clothes is needed to start the process - so the more brands that can participate, the better.
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