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WENZHOU, China (AP) — At a factory on China’s east coast in Zhejiang province, two piles of discarded cotton clothing and bedding, slightly separated into soft, dark colors, are stacked on the floor of a factory. workshop. Jacket sleeves, collars and logo labels protrude from the piles as the garments are fed into the shredders.
This is the first step in a new life for textiles, starting with a recycling effort through Wenzhou Tiancheng Textile Company, one of the largest cotton recycling factories in China.
Textile waste is a pressing global issue, with 12% recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a fashion sustainability nonprofit. Even fewer (1%) are used garments recycled into new garments; Most are used for low-value parts such as insulation or bed fill.
Nowhere is the challenge more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile manufacturer and customer, where more than 26 million tons of clothing are thrown away annually, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.
And factories like this make a slight dent in a country whose textile industry is governed by “fast fashion”: reasonable garments made of non-recyclable synthetic materials, not cotton. Manufactured from petrochemicals that contribute to climate renewal and air and water pollution. Synthetics account for 70% of domestic clothing sales in China.
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China’s footprint is global: iconic e-commerce brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest manufacturers of value-for-money fashion, promoting itself in more than 150 countries.
To replace the game, what fashion expert Shaway Yeh calls “circular sustainability” requires major Chinese clothing brands to waste it entirely.
“You have to start with recyclable fibers and then all this textile waste will be reused,” he said.
But it’s a difficult goal to achieve: according to the Chinese government, only about 20% of Chinese textiles are recycled, and almost all of it is cotton.
Chinese cotton has no defects, said Claudia Bennett of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation. Much of this comes from hard forced labor in Xinjiang province through the country’s Uyghur ethnic minority.
“One in five cotton garments in the world is linked to Uyghur forced labor,” Bennett said.
In May, the United States blocked imports from 26 Chinese cotton investors and warehouses to save products made with forced Uyghur labor. But because the chain of origin is so fragmentary, Uighur cotton is used in garments produced in other countries that do not carry the “made in China” label, Bennett said.
“Many clothing brands are related to the hard forced labor of Uyghurs through cotton,” he said. “They hide the lack of transparency in the chain of origin. ”
While China is a world leader in the production of electric cars and electric public transportation and has set a goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, its efforts in sustainable fashion and textile recycling have taken a backseat.
According to a report this year by independent fashion watchdog Remake, which evaluates major clothing corporations on their environmental, human rights and fair practices, there is little accountability among well-known brands.
The organization gave Shein, whose online marketplace groups around 6,000 Chinese clothing factories under its brand, only 6 numbers out of 150 imaginable. Temu got zero.
The American logo SKIMS, co-founded by Kim Kardashian, and the cheap logo Fashion Nova also scored zero points. The Everlane store obtained 40 points, of which only a portion corresponded to sustainability practices.
China’s internal politics do not help.
It is illegal to use recycled cotton from used clothing to make new clothing in China. This rule was intended, first and foremost, to eliminate clandestine Chinese recycling operations for dirty or otherwise infected materials.
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But now it means that the huge spools of tightly woven, rope-like cotton yarn produced at the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory from used clothes can only be sold for export, basically to China. Europe.
Worse still, many Chinese consumers are unwilling to buy second-hand items, which Wenzhou factory sales director Kowen Tang attributes to rising family incomes.
“That they buy new clothes, novelties,” she said of the stigma attached to buying secondhand.
However, among young Chinese, growing awareness of sustainability has contributed to the emergence of new “remade” clothing companies.
Designer Da Bao, 30, founded Times Remake in 2019, a Shanghai-based logo that takes secondhand garments and transforms them into new garments. In the company’s painting room in Shanghai, he makes paintings from second-hand jeans and sweatshirts to create original new trends.
The company, which started when Da Bao and his ilk were posting their exclusive designs online, now has a flagship store in Shanghai’s trendy Jing’an district, offering its remade garments alongside vintage items, such as Levi’s and Carhartt jackets.
The designs are “a mix of beyond taste and existing fashion aesthetics to create something unique,” Bao said.
Zhang Na owns a fashion brand, Reclothing Bank, which sells clothes, bags, and accessories made from fabrics such as plastic bottles, fishing nets, and sacks of flour.
The labels on the items have QR codes that indicate their composition, how they are made, and where the fabrics come from. Zhang relies on well-established production methods, such as textile fibers made from pineapple leaves, a centuries-old culture that originated in the Philippines.
“We can expand thousands of new fabrics and materials,” he said.
Reclothing Bank started in 2010 to give “new life to old things,” Zhang said of his store located in a historic Shanghai alley with a mix of Western and Chinese architecture. In front of the entrance was a giant of used clothing.
“Ancient objects transmit many memories and feelings to people,” he said.
Zhang said he’s noticed an increase in awareness about sustainability since opening his store, with a core visitor base in his 20s and 30s.
Bao Yang, a student who stopped by the store on a stopover in Shanghai, said she was surprised by the feel of the clothes.
“I think it’s surprising, because when I first walked in, I heard that a lot of the garments were made from shells or corn (husks), however, when I touched the garments in detail, I surely had no idea that they would have such a comfortable feel,” she said.
However, he admits that it is difficult to sell sustainable clothing. “People my age are more addicted to fast fashion or don’t think about the sustainability of clothing,” she says.
Recycled clothing sold in retail stores like Reclothing Bank is priced much higher than fast fashion brands due to their expensive production methods.
And therein lies the real problem, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.
“Studies continually show that consumers are not willing to pay more for garments made from recycled materials, but expect a lower price because those garments are made from second-hand materials,” he said.
With higher prices for procuring, sorting, and processing used clothing, he doesn’t think sustainable fashion will succeed on a large scale in China, where it’s so reasonable to make the clothes.
“Companies do not receive monetary incentives,” he said.
For genuine change, there needs to be “clearer signals from the top,” he added, referring to the government’s goals as those that have boosted China’s electric vehicle industry.
Still, in China, “the government can be friends with any sector,” Lu said, so if China’s communist leaders see economic potential, this could trigger a policy change that would lead to new investments in a sustainable way.
But for now, tightly rolled cotton cones wrapped in plastic and loaded onto trucks outside the Wenzhou Tiancheng factory were destined for markets, far from where their recycling adventure began.
“Fast fashion is not out of fashion” in China, Lu said.
Associated Press Isabella O’Malley in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
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