The Clothing Durability Dozen toolkit, developed as part of the Defra-funded research project ‘Strategies to Improve Design and Testing for Clothing Longevity’, outlines 12 approaches companies can look to explore in order to “improve sustainability across the entire garment lifecycle”.
Senior lecturer Angharad McLaren, who’s organised a web launch of the tool next month, told us: “Fashion is known to be one of the worst performing industries in terms of its environmental impact, and legislation to make the industry assume responsibility for clothing waste appears imminent. They need to exploit the opportunities that are emerging to capture value from discarded clothing.”
“The toolkit has been designed to enable companies to recognise, map out and celebrate what they are already doing to make quality clothes that last for longer, and build on these to develop innovative approaches to clothing durability that are tailored to each company’s requirements,” she says.
In collaboration with three unnamed high-street brands, the university team has tested the potential of the 12 approaches to achieving circularity. When the toolkit launches, this material will be supported by case studies to demonstrate how they might fit into a company’s operations, while it’s suggested they may simply inspire further ideas around how a business might adapt to integrate circularity within their practices.
Read the full article on EcoTextile