Country Road unveils clothes made from offcuts in circular fashion push

nsumers, brands and industry bodies have started to pay more attention to the problem of textile waste.  According to the Global Fashion Agenda, 73 per cent of the world’s clothing eventually ends up in landfills. In Australia alone, the average person discards around 23 kilograms of clothing every year.  But while many of the proposed solutions currently focus on clothing take-back schemes and the second-hand resale market, Country Road’s initiative takes aim at the unseen textile waste that occurs in the supply chain.  We spoke with Country Road brand impact and community manager Fabia Pryor about the new initiative and the brand’s broader sustainability efforts. Inside Retail: Textile waste is a big issue. Why did you choose this particular solution?  Fabia Pryor: It’s a massive issue that we’re all seeking to address – and that’s both pre-consumer and post-consumer. At Country Road, it’s no different, and that’s why we’re really embracing a more circular approach.  Towards Circularity is our most recent project in this space. Being a collection made up of 30 per cent recycled cotton fibres sourced from our own production runs, we really had to take stock and say, ‘This is our waste, so we want to include it in our own production.’  The waste that we’re dealing with is from our heritage sweat program, which is our largest program in the business. Previously, offcuts and seconds resulting from the production of these garments were destined for landfill or incineration, so with this [recycled] product, we have the potential to divert approximately 100,000 kilograms of textile waste from landfill per year. I think that really epitomises the challenge that we’re dealing with here. IR: This initiative has been over 12 months in the making. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in bringing it to life? FP: Because we’re not just using an off-the-shelf recycled yarn – we’re using our own fabrics to create new products – it required a completely new process and capabilities. Our supplier Kashion, alongside our quality and design teams, worked incredibly hard to make this a reality. One of the key challenges was the fibre blend. For this collection, Kashion partnered with a mill that is industry-leading in producing recycled fibre yarns. Getting the blend right took numerous trials, and it’s how we landed on that 30 per cent recycled, 70 per cent virgin blend to achieve the strength, durability and quality that we were after. Another technical challenge was dealing with waste from fabrics that have already been dyed. The challenge was creating a clean colour at the end. Ultimately, we found that yarn made from already dyed materials could be overdyed into navy, black, or charcoal. The third challenge was around collecting and sorting [the waste]. New processes had to be implemented at Kashion to sort the offcuts by colour and then by fabric quality. The strict collecting requirements are really key to ensuring that the final recycled yarn produced is high quality. Kashion has been able to roll this out by creating new jobs with part-time workers who collect the offcuts and quality test them before sending them on to the spinner. I think that really epitomises the benefits of circularity, which is eliminating waste, reducing reliance on natural resources and then also creating jobs. So while we started out with a challenge, it’s actually created a really beautiful solution. IR: Do you plan to use offcuts in your other collections in future? FP: We see this as something that is going to be rolled out to more garments in the future. We’ve got the initial products that launch in February, and then you’ll see more coming into the collection in the months ahead, which is very exciting.  What we also hope to do is share the learning from the project with other suppliers to continue to drive circularity across our supply chain. A lot of the time in our work with Kashion, we’ll say, ‘This is a great test case. Let’s run training with our other suppliers.’ That’s something we see having potential for Towards Circularity as well. IR: What else is Country Road doing in the circularity space?  FP: I feel like we’re at the beginning of our journey with circularity. There’s so much more that we have to learn and apply as an industry, but we really believe it’s the way of the future, so we carefully forecast and plan to minimise overproduction, which is really 101 when you start thinking about circularity.  We embrace recycled materials as much as possible, which obviously saves materials from becoming waste. In our sateen jean, we use tencel-cross-Refibra fibres, which blend recycled cotton scraps with wood pulp sourced from responsibly managed forests. Refibra fibre requires 95 per cent less water than conventional cotton, and it’s a closed loop production process, which reduces waste and stops harmful chemicals released in the environment.  Our homewares team are real leaders in this space, and they work closely with industrial designers and local producers to drive a lot of innovation. In 2020, they launched our Robe range bowls, which are made by melting thousands of recycled bread tags. It was a very exciting project that started with quite a small range, and from the success of that, the team has gone on to partner with local producers to actively explore new technology and new processes to turn waste into valuable products.  Underpinning all of that is the idea that a circular fashion system requires a move away from fast fashion to considered and timeless design, and at Country Road, that’s a real focus for us – to create high quality garments that are designed for longevity, designed to be worn and loved and lived in for a long time. But we also know that our wardrobe needs change over time, so we’ve had a partnership with Red Cross since 2011 called Fashion Trade, and that allows customers to donate pre-loved Country Road garments to our stores or Red Cross stores. Over 10 years, we’ve diverted 250,000 garments from landfill through brand and customer donations, which equals approximately 37,500kg of textiles.  When it comes to our approach to circularity, we are looking at it quite holistically – from design right across the whole life cycle to end of life.