Re4Circular
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Project Description
Our goal is to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry, by ensuring that textile waste does not end up in landfills, but is used as a raw material to produce circular products. After 3 years of experience in the management of used clothes,we have created Re4Circular: the first technology based on Artificial Intelligence, which automates the cataloguing and digitization of textile waste, connected to a B2B digital marketplace that allows to direct the clothes towards circular uses
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
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Description of the project
Summary
aThe textile-fashion industry is one of the most impactful sectors on the environment.
Garments are produced in an unstoppable way, consuming resources and energy, but they are used for a very short time, after which they end up in landfills.
Textile waste is more and more and managing it in a sustainable and economically profitable way is a real challenge.
There are solutions to recover used clothes: for example, if they are in good condition they can be resold as second-hand, if they are made 100% of a single recyclable textile fibre, they can be recycled and if they have small correctable defects, they can be refashioned through tailoring.
However, for directing each item of clothing to the most suitable circular destination, careful sorting is required. Currently this process is done by hand and requires time and resources.
For this reason, nowadays less than 1% of all textile material is recycled into new clothing.
To address this problem, after 3 years of experience in the management of used clothes within our innovative social startup Atelier Riforma, we have created Re4Circular.
It is an AI tech. that, just through the picture of a garment and of its label, can extract all the important features for its circular recovery (e.g. type of garment, gender, season, size, colour, composition, etc.).
This tech is provided to all those organisations that collect discarded clothes, so that they can use it to catalogue and “digitise” what they collect.
The images and data of all the catalogued garments then converge on our B2B digital marketplace, through which they can wholesale their garments to circular fashion businesses that are looking for used garments for their activity (e.g. thrift shops, recycling companies and refashioning professionals).
In this way, Re4Circular matches supply and demand of used clothes, reducing the amount of textile waste that ends up in landfills and ensuring that it is used as a raw material to produce circular products.
Key objectives for sustainability
Our goal is to facilitate the transition of the fashion industry towards a more circular model, thus reducing its environmental impact.
On the one hand, we are decreasing the amount of post-consumer clothing that ends up in landfills. We ensure, instead, that every garment collected is analysed with our AI sorting technology in order to direct it towards the most sustainable destination possible.
On the other hand, through our platform, we promote the use, by the textile-fashion sector, of existing material (textile waste as a secondary raw material), avoiding the use of virgin resources for the production of clothing.
The huge environmental impact of fashion is in fact due to its linear model: large amounts of resources are used to create the clothes; these are used for a short time (half of fast fashion garments are thrown away within a year); and eventually they end up in landfills.
The fashion industry produces more than 100 billions new clothes every year. According to forecasts, the need for clothing will continue to grow, rising from 62 million tons in 2015 to 102 million tons in 2030.
To produce 1kg of fabric, on average, 200 L of water are consumed. The textile industry used 79 billion m3 of water in 2015. It is also estimated that textile production is responsible for 20% of global water pollution.
Moreover, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions (1.7 billion tons of CO2 per year).
87% of the textile material, after use, ends up in landfills (mostly by exporting this waste to developing countries). Thus all the resources that were used to produce it are wasted with it. Less than 1% of the material is recycled into new clothing.
According to the "thredUP's Annual Resale Report (2020)", giving a second life to a garment reduces its impact in terms of eCO2 by 79%; the application of our model on a large scale, therefore, would lead to a drastic decline in the environmental impact of the fashion industry.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The regeneration process (whether it occurs through re-sale, or through recycling or sartorial refashioning), needs a lot of information about the clothes, which currently is difficult to obtain.
Currently, circular fashion businesses stock up on used clothes offline, buying “without checking”.
Our platform is a much more convenient purchase channel, it is online, with the possibility of viewing the clothes item by item, knowing all the characteristics and filtering your search based on your needs.
This allows a careful choice, with a unique user experience, and a better outcome of the regenerative process.
One of the three circular destinations targeted by our sorting technology is “creative upcycling”, that is the refashioning of the garment through tailoring. The aim is to make it flawless and wearable again. Not only! By definition, upcycling leads to a product of higher value than the initial one (the value can be economic, but also emotional, artistic, etc.).
In order for the garment to be bought again and so have a second life, it also has to be aesthetically remarkable and that is why technical and artistic skills are required to carry out this process.
Through our activity we valorize upcycling and make it known among consumers, as well as facilitate designers, artisans and creatives to carry it out, being able to find the starting material conveniently online, through our platform.
Beauty is at the core of this process: we make sure that what has become waste, something ugly and useless, turns instead into something useful and beautiful.
Furthermore, through our communication activity, we spread awareness among the population about the need for a circular transition in the fashion industry. And we show how a used / recycled / upcycled garment can be not only useful and sustainable, but also beautiful and trendy.
Key objectives for inclusion
Our sorting machine is not completely automatic, but requires the presence of an operator (in particular to distinguish flawless garments from those no longer reusable). In addition, before the recycling has necessarily to be done by hand. For this activity we will create a cooperative, in which to employ people with economic and social disadvantage. This would lead to the creation of new jobs, “inclusive” and specialised in circular activities.
The upcycling activity is also undertaken by many "social tailor’s shops", that are tailor’s shops in which is promoted the inclusion of disadvantaged people. Our activity ensures that they have a greater ease of finding the used clothes necessary for their activity.
In the same way we facilitate all the oter professionals who dedicate themselves to upcycling, such as designers, tailors, artisans, who would normally have difficulty in dealing with major players in the collection of used clothes and would have less bargaining power. Our platform represents a convenient purchasing channel that helps to include even the smallest businesses within this supply chain.
Our platform is not based only on a pure commercial relationship of buying and selling goods, but creates a real circular ecosystem, made up of collectors, sorters, recyclers, second-hand resellers, upcyclers and consumers. A circular and digital supply chain, which is good for the environment and for people.
Finally, our platform ensures that circular fashion can be applied to a larger scale. This can lead to lower prices for circular garments (second hand, recycled or upcycled), making them more and more accessible to all the citizens.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Our solution facilitates the valorisation of used clothes from a circular perspective, rather than their disposal as waste.
In doing so, our solution represents a meeting point between sustainability, aesthetics and inclusion, applied to the fashion industry.
The circular economy, in fact, allows us to:
- decrease the environmental impact of this industry, by reducing textile waste and limit the sector's dependence on virgin resources;
- enhance the skills related to the regenaration of clothing and facilitate the creation of circular products (reused, recycled or upcycled) that are aesthetically interesting for the consumer;
- create new inclusive jobs in activities related to the recovery of discarded clothing.
