Can we upcycle and make it last?
By: Valérie Boiten
Tags: Fashion, Circular Econonomy, Recycling, Upcycling

Paule Josephe

About a year ago, I joined a project that wants to bring upcycling to a new level. Six designers delve into our textile waste streams and develop new products out of the materials they find. The project’s mission is to map their ideas onto a local value chain with industrial partners, effectively repurposing at scale. When I joined, I had been researching the end-of-life of clothing and other textiles for a few years. And yet it was with this project that it all became real to me.

At first, I was surprised by the variety of the newly designed products. Long gone is the age of the upcycled tote-bags, handed out at every conference room you walk into. Instead, our designers make shoes from discarded denim and curtains from cast-off t-shirts. They turn classical office-style men shirts into embroidered blouses. They cut up the leather covers of old sofas to weave the scraps into fashionable chair seat patterns.

I found myself a daily witness to the creativity and originality of these local and small-scale efforts — and to the raw pain of trying to get it off the ground.

Inevitably, our project’s do-it-yourself attitude has had to extend into the value chain, as there is simply no local infrastructure in place to upcycle, repair and repurpose used products. In Belgium, the textile industry has morphed into a high-tech and highly specialized sector. But the human hands and skills have either retired or been outsourced since decades. It means we lack the capabilities necessary to produce bigger quantities of upcycled textile products. The project, called “Top-Atelier”, is building that infrastructure, finding partners to sort, cut and laundry items quickly and effectively, and connecting them in this new venture and in a new value chain.

La Gadoue

But that’s only the challenge of making it. Where are the markets for locally repurposed shoes, curtains and blouses? The designers quickly found that they needed to cut the middlemen of retail and talk directly with their end-consumers. They sell via Instagram, at design fairs or via committed boutiques. But the B2B-route is more complicated: there are important but complex regulations to comply with, if we want our curtains and pillows to be purchased by hotels and restaurants. When working with materials which were discarded by random consumers like you and me, it is impossible to state clearly where the fabric was made, what it contains and how it has been treated throughout its lifespan.

Sustainability may be all the rage, but it does not make a genuine difference in purchasing decisions made by consumers or by procurement managers in the services industry. There is also the power of perception to combat, where shop managers may feel skeptical about small and local businesses working with waste materials: can they deliver on time? Can they keep up with trends and seasons?

So we need to step up. The first answer to building successful “circular” economies, will be to reconnect the threads at the local level. We need less grand think thanks who spend their time strategizing and reporting, and instead more local efforts to connect SMEs, product developers and waste managers in small and tightly-bound ecosystems. Let’s give way to the power of small.

Tropas Shoes

More info: www.topatelier.be

Participating designers and brands include:

Tropas Shoes, https://www.tropas.shoes

Onbetaalbaar, https://www.onbetaalbaar.com

La Gadoue Atelier, https://www.lagadoueatelier.com/en

Studio AMA, https://www.studioama.be

Paule Josephe, https://www.instagram.com/paulejosephe/