In March 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its sixth assessment report that global warming of 1.5 degrees will be exceeded within the next decade. The OECD guidance for the clothing and footwear sector lists greenhouse gas emissions as one of the sector risks. With the focus topic of Circular Economy and Climate Protection, the Partnership for Sustainable Textiles aims to specifically address the use of resources.

Partnership Initiatives are intended to enable members to jointly achieve a local impact through circular and resource-conserving textile production, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions. After the Partnership members laid the foundations for the Partnership Initiatives in 2022, the year 2023 was dedicated to the development of key performance indicators (KPIs) within the Strategy Circle. The KPIs serve to make the joint transformation process measurable with regard to the reduction of primary raw materials and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This is to be presented at various levels in the textile supply chain. 

Further information on the

• Focus topic on the Circular Economy and Climate Protection can be found on the PST website.
• Sector risk climate and greenhouse gas emissions
• Support tools for assessing greenhouse gas emissions (Assessment of GHG measuring tools)
• Multilingual eLearning courses on climate action training available on atingi: English, Mandarin, Khmer, Bengali, Vietnamese.

Down and feathers can be recycled and reprocessed between three and five times. How? As filling material for new bedding, and even then, it doesn’t end there. At the end of their life cycle, they can continue to be used as insulation material in the construction industry or even as fertilizer in horticulture and agriculture. 

To ensure that such sustainable use becomes common practice, the Circular Down partnership initiative has set itself the task of making down and feathers usable for as long as possible and keeping them in circulation for longer as filling material for bedding. As part of the project, discarded bedding filled with down and feathers is to be collected in Germany and recycled.  

Longer-term use and the associated lower demand for fresh down and feathers can reduce longer transport routes and thus CO2 emissions overall. However, in order to obtain a holistically sustainable product, all newly obtained down and feathers must also be produced without animal suffering. Particularly in importing countries such as China, reports of a lack of animal welfare continue to emerge. The PI Circular Down is therefore also campaigning for compliance with animal welfare standards in feather production in China. To this end, training materials for employees on Chinese poultry farms are to be produced and auditors trained over the course of the project. 

These members participated in the PI Circular Down

Brands:
Essenza Home, erlich textil

Civily society:
FairWertung

Other cooperation partners: 
BTE Handelsverband Textil, Verband deutscher Federnindustrie e.V. (VDFI), BEVH

A circular textile collection in which the individual relevant product information of garments is visible at a glance for brands, manufacturers, sorters, recyclers and consumers? What sounds like wishful thinking is set to become reality in the Partnership Initiative Implementing Circularity launched in December 2023. 

The Partnership Initiative Implementing Circularity in the Textile Industry (ICT) aims to support German fashion companies and their suppliers in the production countries Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and India in developing both circular designs and a digital product passport.  

To this end, they are advised on the selection of sustainable materials and the impact of their properties and trained in the application of fully circular design criteria. The garments produced as a result will eventually be equipped with a digital product passport. This will provide sorters and recyclers, as well as customers, with all the necessary information on material composition and chemical treatment at the end of the product’s useful life in order to identify the appropriate recycling process. The associated suppliers are also trained on recyclable designs and the requirements of the future eco-design criteria and can thus achieve a competitive advantage. In this way, all stakeholders involved in the textile value chain will be prepared for the implementation of the EU Ecodesign Regulation for sustainable and recyclable textiles.  

Overall, the aim of the Partnership Initiative is to reduce the use of materials, goods destroyed and CO2 emissions within textile supply chains in the medium term.  

These members participated in the PI Implementing Circularity

Brands:
Aldi Süd, Blutsgeschwister, KiK, Otto Group mit Otto und Bon Prix, Snocks, Tchibo, BoerGroup, Texaid

Civil society
FairWertung

It is estimated that the textile industry is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions. The majority of emissions are generated in production countries in Asia during fossil energy production and during production in the supply chains. However, this is mostly outside the scope of European brands and manufacturers. It is often not so easy to convert production facilities to renewable energies, either because electricity, heat and energy are not reliably available or because the costs are too high. Last but not least, data on the emissions of the value chain (so-called Scope 3 emissions) is hardly available. As they cannot be directly attributed to any company, there are few incentives and obligations to reduce them.  

As a result, the population in the producing countries is doubly affected by the impact of emissions due to climate change-related extreme weather phenomena and air pollution in the vicinity of textile factories. To counteract this development, the PI Supplier Decarbonization was launched in September 2023 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the textile supply chain in the long term. To this end, employees from around 50 supplier companies of participating partnership members in Bangladesh and Pakistan are trained in Climate Action Trainings (CAT) on the climate impact of textile production. Each company is ultimately required to implement at least three energy-saving measures and set itself long-term reduction targets.  

A total of 150 energy efficiency measures are to be implemented in the production facilities. In addition to these measures, a study is to be carried out as part of the initiative to investigate the health effects of air pollution on the local population. The idea is to develop suitable remedial mechanisms based on the data collected. 

These members participated in the PI Supplier Decarbonization

Brands:
Adler, DELTEX, Gebr. Heinemann, JAKO, KiK, Lidl, Otto Group, Sockswear, Takko, WIBU

Civil society:
BlueSign, Fashion Revolution Germany, NABU, UBA

Other cooperation partners: 
50 production sites, community stakeholders (Karatchi and Dhaka) 

At present, production and consumption in the textile and clothing industry follow a linear economic model, which means that a considerable proportion of products are not recycled at the end of their life but disposed of. The raw materials they contain, and the energy used to produce them remain unused and are lost. It is therefore crucial to start at the product design and development stage. This is because up to 80% of the environmental impact – from the extraction of raw materials to the manufacture and use of products and their disposal – is already predetermined in the development phase.  

This is precisely where the Product Clones I and II pilot project, which was successfully completed in 2023, came in – in the design and potential barriers to the recyclability and circularity of existing products. The participating member companies selected ten of their products, which were examined in collaboration with the Research Institute for Textiles and Clothing at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences for circularity criteria such as durability, reparability, material and energy efficiency, minimization of problematic substances and the use of renewable raw materials.  

Based on the investigations, solutions were then developed together with the companies. The result: ‘cloned’ products with the same functionality, but with more sustainable materials or designs. A production report was developed for each product, based on which future products will become more sustainable and, above all, more recyclable. 

These members participated in the pilot project Product clones

Product clones I 

Brands:
Vaude Sport GmbH & Co., Dibella b.v., Deuter Sport GmbH, IVY OAK GmbH, NKD Group GmbH, Brands Fashion GmbH, Ortovox Sportartikel GmbH, Hopp KG, Sympatex Technologies GmbH

Product clones II 

Brands:
Hakro, Seidensticker, s.Oliver, Blutsgeschwister

Other cooperation partners:
Research institute for Textile and Clothing – Hochschule Niederrhein