This newsletter is about the fashion world needing to embrace the challenge of transforming into a more sustainable industry.
One of my favorite parts of working at the cross-section of sustainability and fashion is the people you meet. Everyone is invested both professionally and personally. I was just in a meeting where we were all discussing the troubled state of recycling, and one person piped up, "do you realize how long it takes me to wash out my peanut butter jars?"
Most of us grew up learning to separate our trash. We assumed the system would work and we just needed to do our conscious part. But does it make a difference any more? Should we spend our time washing out our peanut butter jars?
For this week's edition, your correspondent dove into: What Happened to Recycling?
Note: I imagine our “expertise in waste” readers might find this piece a bit oversimplified. Please reply with any feedback on things I have wrong, or elements I’m missing!
Operation National Sword
It starts in July 2017, when China announced the (incredibly named) initiative: Operation National Sword. For the past 30 years, most of the world's recyclable plastic was sent to China to be processed and sold. It's one of those stories that, until recently, captured the beauty of globalization.
After China's entrance into the WTO in 2001, The West began to buy a lot more stuff from China. That meant lots of fully-stocked ships coming to the U.S.. They would empty their cargo, and would have been returning home empty, if not for some enterprising waste managers who realized they could get them to transport plastic waste back to China, very cheaply. Even more fortuitously, China had huge demand for the unprocessed waste because they were manufacturing more products for the entire world (as well as experiencing their own resource-intensive economic boom).
China gets American plastic waste and turns it into new plastic stuff to sell us. We send more plastic waste on the ship back. Rinse. Repeat.
I hesitate to use the world circular in this context, but the above sequence would certainly make the Amazon Flywheel jealous. China was, at one point, taking in 70% of our plastic waste.
But of course, there were plenty of problems. Lax environmental standards meant a good deal of the plastic ended up in rivers, burned near "cancer villages," or any other number of horrible consequences which, in hindsight, don't seem that unexpected.
So in January 2018, China announced severe restrictions on the type of waste it would accept. Chinese plastic imports are down 99%. Paper waste imports (which include your Amazon box) are down by 1/3rd.
China:
began to recognize the adverse environmental impacts of their waste importing
no longer wanted to be seen as the world's dumping ground.
with a rising middle class, they now had more than enough of their own waste to deal with.
It all fits very neatly into general Chinese 2019 geopolitical stories, but there was one other kind of crazy reason.
Single-Streaming
Single-stream recycling is where you put all your recycled items into one bin, and then people and robots at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) sort it out. More than 100 million Americans use single-stream systems, and it's ease was a critical part of increasing the culture of recycling.
What happened next might qualify for the adverse consequences hall of fame.
The practice, created to encourage recycling across a wider population, was a major contributor to the Chinese ban. It led to "aspirational recycling", or where people, eager to recycle, regularly added un-recyclable materials to bins. Contamination from food can make even the good plastic un-recyclable. Many readers understand the numerous ways the construction of a product (especially a garment) make it un-recyclable by standard means. Simply put, the system wasn't built for what we're putting into it. We tried to make it easier, and we made it worse.
..and then, finally, the way recycling had been financed in the U.S. has completely broken down.
Privatization
All of our recycling is privately managed:
Waste Management rapidly expanded beginning in the 1970s, privatizing waste services that were formerly run by cities and now serves more than 21 million municipal and business customers. But the largest part of its business is trash, not recycling. (In 2018, its collection and disposal business made $693 million on a year-over-year basis, while its recycling business fell by $197 million.)
Since it makes money when materials end up in a landfill or waste-to-energy plant, but loses it when people recycle, the company has no financial incentive to help increase recycling rates. “Big Waste” companies now run the majority of landfills in the country.
But in the days of the China Buying Our Stuff Flywheel, everyone was a winner. As an example, the city of Philadelphia could sell a ton of plastic waste to a contractor, Republic Services, for $67 in 2012. But after the China ban, things changed. In January 2018, the contractor started asking to be paid $20 a ton to take the recycling of Philly's hands. By September, that price had jumped to $170!
Cities were selling plastic waste for $67 a ton. They are now paying $170 a ton to have it collected.
We could all debate what this means with regards to the privatization of a public good, but more importantly, it's a reminder that the system, as it was built, was a delicate one: when one part broke, the entire thing collapsed.
Which brings us back to the question: Does it even make sense to keep sorting through and separating our own personal waste?
It's tough to answer, because, I simply won't (or can’t) stop attempting to recycle. But, does taking part in that somewhat-theatrical act contribute to the quiet breakdown of the system as a whole?
In the meantime, I'll continue to attempt to clean my plastic, toss it into the correct recycling bin, and then write more newsletters hopefully making people a bit more aware.
SUSTAINABLE LINKS
Real Men Don’t Rent
(New York Times): The NYT Style section looks into the potential for clothing rentals among men. The piece is chock full of anecdotes (as there is little data out there), but it’s a certainly an entertaining read. If anyone is aware of men’s rental services, please reply!
Fashion has a waste problem. These companies want to fix it
(Vogue Business): The sheer energy placed into the sustainability conversations at major fashion publications in 2020 is beyond heartening. This was a fantastic piece covering the reuse of deadstock and improving procurement processes:
Francois Souchet, who leads the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative, believes that tackling the overproduction problem at its source will require fundamental changes in how the industry approaches garment design and plans for production. The ubiquity of large order minimums — for final products as well as in earlier manufacturing stages, such as fabric sourcing — builds waste into every step of production, something that can be avoided. Souchet points to Zara, which has faced criticism for propelling the wasteful fast fashion model but tests new products in markets before ramping up production, helping it to avoid wasted inventory.
The Future of Upcycling: From Rags to Riches
(Business of Fashion): How Eileen Fisher, Burberry, Patagonia and others are tackling upcycling efforts:
“You just have to disconnect from a preconception of an existing supply chain model and really think creatively around what’s happening,” says Graeme Raeburn, performance director at London-based fashion brand Raeburn, which has built a business out of reworking surplus fabrics and garments.
And finally…this Stella tweet caused quite the commotion: