Examination of Witnesses (Questions 527-539)
Mr Mike Barry, Mr Brian McCarthy, Mr Paul Ozanne and Mr Alan Wheeler
4 MARCH 2008
Q527Chairman: Good morning. Can I start off by asking you to what extent do product designers, materials scientists, engineers and the retail sector work together to consider the full life-cycle impacts of textiles? Are there barriers to co-operation between the disciplines? Perhaps I could ask this at the same time. How do you try within these processes to be less dependent upon virgin materials? Obviously these are considerations that affect the whole waste chain and resource efficiency.
Mr Wheeler: May I say thank you very much for inviting me here today, my Lord Chairman. I am Alan Wheeler from the Textile Recycling Association. I have thought about this. In my experience, or from the experience of the members of our trade association, I think that clothing is not recycled in the sense that people really understand. Most clothing that is not suitable for reuse in the first instance is not recycled back into clothes generally speaking, but is converted or put into lower-grade items, so wiping cloths, mattress fillings, blankets and that kind of thing. There does not seem to be much completion of the recycling loop, when it comes to sourcing fibres at the manufacturing stage. We also find that the quality of the clothing that is coming through to our members is on the decline, which makes it harder to reuse; also the complexity of the garments that we are seeing coming through is increasing. It does suggest that there is not much thought about how recyclable an item is at the end of its useful life. I think that the lack of understanding of the life-cycle impacts of garments is illustrated quite graphically by the EU Draft Textiles Products Background Report—a very catchy title!—which is a draft green public procurement policy document, and it makes no reference whatsoever to manufacturers or retailers procuring textiles using recycled fibres. I think that needs to be addressed.
Mr Ozanne: We have noticed few signs across the retail sector that there is an awareness of textile waste management issues. We have also noticed far more concern in the packaging and food waste area. However, I do feel that sustainability is an issue which is now more likely to be addressed because of its relative importance. For argument's sake, the recent M&S move to link up with Oxfam highlights very good issues. The barriers, as I see them? UK consumption is high and increasing and 90% of the clothes we consume are imported; hence significant impacts occur outside the UK, over which there is little or no control. Secondly, the clothing supply chain is complex, global, and characterised by subcontractors—a lot of these from the developing world—and the use of migrant workers, which poses traceability problems. The third barrier is the emergence of "fast fashion", which at the moment makes up 20% of the UK market. This has doubled in six years. This trend contributes significantly to the quantities of low-grade clothing, which are difficult to displace.
Q528 Chairman: I would just like to follow this up. It is the designers who design these, who source these. It is the companies that employ these people. I realise that you are at one end of the chain and Mr Wheeler is in another part, but are they not driven by cost considerations? They want to provide cheap clothes that can be thrown away. Is there something that could be done there to slow down the cycle of redundancy?
Mr Ozanne: I have to confess that, on a personal level, I do have some concern when my 30-year-old daughter buys five or six dresses from Matalan, wears them half a dozen times, and then throws them away without washing them—on the pretext that she is being environmentally careful! However, that material will be of low quality and therefore low value. If that is coupled with the amount of material we are able to recycle—I think it is about 3%, 62,000 tonnes, that we are able to recycle as a nation—it will inevitably either drive the price of the reused clothing market down, or it will go to landfill.
Mr Wheeler: Can I just clarify that the 62,000 tonnes is approximately the amount that has actually gone to recycling, but we collect around 300,000 tonnes a year for reuse and recycling—which is still only about an eighth of what we are buying each year. There is still an awful lot of clothing and textiles out there that is not being collected for recycling or reuse.
Q529 Lord Lewis of Newnham: This term "fast fashion", what does it mean? It is used quite often in these particular documents, and I am not clear what it does mean.
Mr Ozanne: I am not an expert but I think the type of fashion would be in certain cheap supermarkets, clothing chains. The garments are quick to produce; the turnover is very fast; and the length of time they are able to be worn is very short. Certainly not the uniform I am standing in here, I expect it to last ten years. Going back to my daughter's situation—and I hope she is not looking in!—she would not expect to wear a garment more than three or four times.
Q530 Chairman: Mr Barry?
Mr Barry: Let me offer some views as a retailer. Traditionally, clothing retailing has been characterised by two seasons: there was a summer season or what we call spring, and an autumn collection for winter. What has happened now with fast fashion is that you see up to ten or 12 different seasons in a year. Rather than just selling the same clothing for six months, retailers will try to change it every month. To do that, you have to have a very fast turn-round on clothing production. You have to have it designed quickly; brought to the UK quickly; sold quickly; and people will hope that people will wear it for a month and then change again. That is not how the M&S model is built. The M&S model is built upon quality; but clearly there has been a huge increase in the UK market share for fast fashion over the last few years.
Q531 Lord Lewis of Newnham: In general, it is of a lower quality?
Mr Barry: I have to be hugely careful here. M&S has fought hard to preserve its quality requirements in the marketplace. I have heard voices in the outside world that have said that fast fashion can compromise quality, yes.
Q532 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: But am I not right that the real cost of quite a lot of textiles has fallen substantially over the course of the last 20 years, say, because of the advent of cheap textiles that are produced in, particularly, China?
Mr Barry: There has been a huge amount of price deflation in the marketplace; something like 25% in the last four or five years. That brings benefits to UK plc and to UK consumers. We have to be very honest about that in terms of pressures upon inflation and in terms of access to decent clothing for the vast majority of the UK population; but it also drives an environmental challenge. I would like to pick up on the word that Paul used here. Traceability is the big problem when it comes to clothing. M&S is unique in the UK and one of the few in the world that can trace back beyond the primary factory that produces its clothing, to the dye-house, to the spinning mill and, increasingly, we are going back into the raw material field. Unlike food, where we can go back literally to the cow—the individual cow that has been used in a ready-meal we can trace right back—for clothing it is still new; so cotton is sourced as a commodity. There are huge environmental and social impacts in cotton production. Apart from fair trade and organic—we have bought a third of the world's supply of Fairtrade cotton but this is only 10% of the cotton M&S uses; 90% of the cotton that M&S uses is still bought as a commodity. We still cannot go back to the field and dictate standards. Not many people can go back to the actual dye-house and look at how the environmental impacts of that are controlled. It is actually very difficult to start looking at the total social environment footprint and how you reduce it, until you get that basic traceability.
Mr McCarthy: The answer to your question is that there is insufficient interaction between these people. There are two initiatives that I would like to mention briefly, which hopefully will start to move this interaction a stage further. TechniTex is the textiles and clothing network within Materials KTN; and within the KTN there is the Materials and Design Exchange. One initiative we are putting together next month is a conference here in London on sustainability, which will feature the Defra road map on clothing sustainability. We are therefore actively trying to engage with our design academic colleagues within the London School of Fashion and the Royal College of Art. The second joint initiative we have made to encourage interaction between designers and the technologists is to have six so-called Spark Awards. These are cash grants which will enable interaction between academics and designers who are looking to embed technology into their fashion garments. Two initiatives which will hopefully start to get further interaction to take place.
Q533 Lord Methuen: I think that you have already covered to some degree Defra's consulting with stakeholders to develop a sustainable clothing road map. Would you like to amplify on that? You have mentioned it briefly.
Mr McCarthy: I did. I am participating in the next meeting at the end of this month, with the various stakeholders of the road map. There are a couple of points that I would like to make. I think that the consideration must include the use of textiles into other products. During a visit to Israel, for example, textile products are being recycled and introduced into pipes for use in industry. There are other streams, therefore, where this waste potentially should be looked at. The other thing that I think we should look at across different industrial sectors is the actual specification of the textile products. Are they over-specified in terms of the use of virgin product, where recycled material could actually be used? The final point I would make is that the study also needs to look at some fairly specialised applications. For example, there are military textiles which need to be recycled; there are medical garments from the NHS—quite considerable quantities of these; also, there is a major problem reflected in the use of personal protective equipment. These are additional factors which we hope to build into the Defra road map.
Mr Ozanne: I would like to support what my colleague has been saying. The Salvation Army Trading Company very much welcomes involvement in the road map. There are three points that we would like to raise. First, we do desperately need further research in the recycling of clothing when they can no longer be used as clothing. Secondly, we need a definition of what is actually waste as far as textiles are concerned. The Salvation Army is currently exporting a huge amount of clothing to Eastern Europe, which is classified as waste even though we know that the majority of it, possibly up to 80%, will be re-worn. We would therefore like to see a redefinition of what comprises waste as far as textiles are concerned. The third thing we would like to see is further research into the production and design, so that they can be made more easily recyclable. We are looking at the composition of it, the way it is put together and can it be disassembled very quickly? However, there is a sort of Catch 22 situation. What do we need to do first? Create the new technological markets so that we know what we want, or create the raw materials that the new technology might need? The last thing is that we need to raise public awareness of the advantages of buying good-quality clothes—both for the environmental aspect and indeed the prudence of it. Good-quality clothes last a lot longer. It is a rich person who can afford fast-fashion clothing.
Mr Wheeler: I agree with everything that Paul Ozanne and Brian McCarthy have said. I have three points that I would like to see from the sustainable clothing road map. It seems inevitable that, if we are to meet the objectives of the Waste Strategy for England, more clothing will have to be collected. As I mentioned, we currently collect 300,000 tonnes of clothing and textiles each year. Obviously we need to look at how we will increase the amount that is collected. Before we can do that, however, we need to secure new markets. Currently the textile reclamation traders' buying price for reusable and recycling grades is very high, and many would say that it is too high. The market price at which they are able to sell their goods after collection and reprocessing is not sustainable in the long run and it is creating a big problem. If we were to increase the supply of all grades of textiles as we increase collection, it is likely to lead to a lowering of selling prices, which itself will create more problems. This is particularly the case if it is not to be accompanied by a lowering of the prices which the textile collectors have to pay when they source their goods. Also, the demand in the UK for recycling grades is currently very low; so we need to look at what alternatives are out there. Paul touched on that, and he also mentioned the fact that garments need to be designed with recycling in mind. I would just touch upon the definition of textiles and whether they are waste or not. Last year, we met with Dr Caroline Jackson, MEP and rapporteur, in Brussels and we managed to get textiles on Article 11 of the Waste Framework Directive. If that goes through, there would be a Europe-wide definition of what is and what is not considered waste and it would offer greater clarity. Unfortunately, I think the matter has now gone on to the back burner. I would like to see textiles brought back to the forefront under Article 11. If we could get that, that would be fantastic.
Mr McCarthy: I have two very brief points. The first is that there are technology breakthroughs. Hyosung in Korea have recently announced the use of recycled nylon for use in ladies' lingerie. This is the first application in those areas. Also, taking up Paul's point, there are new markets, new demands, for waste synthetic fibre. There is a UK artificial sports surfaces manufacturer who is desperately trying to find good-grade recycled materials. There are developing markets in new areas, therefore.
Q534 Lord Haskel: I just want to go back to one point that Mr Barry raised about traceability. You were saying that Marks & Spencer is unique in that they can trace back the way the fabric has been processed, dyed, finished, et cetera. Does that mean that, as far as the chain of processing is concerned, we are going to have to leave it to commercial pressures, or the rising commodity prices, or just what the market will stand as far as sustainability is concerned, or are there some other steps that we could take to try and make the production process more sustainable?
Mr Barry: Given that most of the clothing sold in the UK, 95% of it, is made outside the UK, it is very difficult for you to regulate or to legislate for, to drive business to have better traceability. We have seen in the last two or three years that there are the beginnings of competitive pressure in the marketplace to get better traceability. People like Nike are doing very good stuff; the sports shoes manufacturers are doing very good stuff; M&S is. The one-eyed man in the land of the blind—I will be quite honest about that. You are now seeing other clothing retailers responding to that and feeling that, competitively, they cannot not have a position; and you are beginning to see changes happening. I struggle to see how you would control it by anything other than voluntary measures, though, to be honest. You have such disparate supply chains involved, across 50 or 60 countries in the world, all with very different expectations. Having said all that, I want to be very careful that we do not get too UK-centric about this and too arrogant in the UK. Some of the very best innovations that we are now seeing in the world to do with clothing are coming out of the Koreas, the Chinas, the Indias, the United States. There are some fantastic new materials being developed there; so I do not want us to assume that, just because clothing is produced globally, there are any amount of problems overseas but not solutions as well.
Lord May of Oxford: I have a really unhelpful question/statement. I feel that there is a fundamental lack of contact with reality in this session we are having now; because almost everyone in Britain has more clothes than they need and we are talking with people who, by and large, are representative of industries that want to sell us even more clothes. At some point in the morning one might at least voice the feeling—with no ill-feeling towards anybody—that this is a ludicrous conversation we are having.
Chairman: I think that we have more clothes than we have time at the moment!
Q535 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Can I pick up this technical issue? There are all kinds of new technical textiles that are being developed from a very wide range of materials, with technical fibres being produced from polymers, metals, ceramics, coatings, membranes and various composites. What advantages and limitations do these textiles have compared to traditional textiles, in terms of durability and waste reduction? How widespread is the use of these technical textiles? Do suppliers and retailers want to use them? Are they encouraged to use them?
Mr McCarthy: It is important to realise that technical textiles are textiles where the performance is more important than the aesthetics. That is the key thing. After this session I have a number of examples which I will pass on to the Committee. I think that it is important to try and realise the breadth of application of technical textiles. For example, by 2010 there will be approximately 35 kilos of textiles in every single car manufactured, and that is an increasing trend. Technical textiles are important because they provide multi-functionality and the applications are quite considerable. I have one example. Low & Bonar in Scotland have a very successful 24/7 business and they are reporting record profits this year. They are weaving aluminium and selling industrial, large quantities of aluminium to Holland for their large greenhouse, crop-growing operations. A very specialised agricultural textile use, therefore, in those specific areas. I have mentioned automotive textiles. The likes of Toyota are looking at using nano-engineered clays, to be incorporated directly into the polymer. Why? Because they have greater inherent flame-retardance and also are lighter. It is an element leading towards lightweighting. However, the diversity of technical textiles is considerable. I have brought one example along. It is rope technology, but it is basically yarn formation followed by braiding, and applications. This particular one is quite interesting because, manufactured in the UK, it is actually a transport textile. It is an aircraft load support harness. One of the areas the company is looking at is how it can reduce the weight. Because of fuel usage in aircraft, how can it reduce the weight but maintain the same safety, embedded strength characteristics? When this is exposed to light, it starts to degrade. They are therefore looking at the technology of how to reduce the weight of this component but still have the built-in safety element.
Q536 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Do you think that there are technical barriers that need to be overcome in order to develop these technical textiles any further? What research is being undertaken to address these?
Mr McCarthy: There is significant research taking place in the UK. For example, in the area of medical textiles considerable efforts are being addressed to the growth of cell therapies, stem cells, using textile tissue scaffolds. There is significant research proposed now, this year, to be funded by the Technology Strategy Board. In other areas, there are significant developments in terms of integrating electronics into clothing. That raises new issues about standardisation; new issues about how these products can be recycled; and how the electronic element can be separated as it comes to end of life. However, there is considerable expertise in the UK addressing these particular areas.
Q537 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: You were saying that these tend to be specialist areas, higher-priced areas, and one sees it for example in the sports area, where there are a whole lot of special materials.
Mr McCarthy: The technology drivers are coming from the sportswear industry; they are coming from M&S; the Bagir suit with the integrated iPod controls. It is coming from the military; it is coming from medical devices; it is coming from sportswear. These are the key technology driver areas.
Q538 Lord Haskel: For the record, My Lord Chairman, I should say that I am the Honorary President of TechniTex. Moving on to the Salvation Army, however, it seems to be the only organisation that has been recycling textiles for a very long time. You said in your note to us that it was 30 or 40 years, and I think that is a matter of congratulation. However, you do say that the textile recycling industry has declined in recent years and that only a small proportion of the potentially available material is actually reused. You have told us a little about why you think this is so, but could you say how you think this might be changed and what more could be done?
Mr Ozanne: If we look at the history briefly, in the 1960s and 1970s there were thousands of people employed in the textile recycling industry. At that time about 90% of the collections were recycled, mainly because people had worn them out. As the UK residents became more affluent, there came a shift from wearing clothes until their end of life to changing them from choice or fashion. Recently, this was further fuelled by the fact that we seem to be a borrow-to-spend nation. This has seen a shift from the practice of collecting clothes for recycling to collecting clothes because they are still in extremely good condition and they are valued to be re-worn. Therefore, their value far exceeds that which can be obtained for recycling grades. In practice, I would postulate that the reuse market is the only way at the moment to make clothing collections viable, because the other grades have little or no market value.
Mr Wheeler: Can I just clarify a few things? The Textile Recycling Association has been in existence since 1913 and a number of our members have been trading for pretty much that length of time. They are family-run businesses that have been handed down through the generations. The first example of textile recycling that we can trace in the UK is people collecting textiles for recycling in the 18th century for shoddy. The textile recycling industry has therefore been going on for a very long time. I also wanted to clarify that, yes, there has been a trend towards the decline in reprocessing in the UK, but actually the amount of clothing that is being collected for recycling is generally speaking on the increase slightly. It has risen a little, year on year, and certainly up until 2005 when we last looked at the data. The amount that is actually being collected is therefore on the increase, and I just wanted to clarify that. The other thing is that we did a survey of our members, as part of an EU-wide funded project in 2005. We looked at the state of the UK textile recycling industry and at the different barriers that were preventing us from expanding our collections, or that were presenting barriers to trading. At the time, our members estimated that about 55% of clothing was still suitable for reuse; so the majority is still suitable for reuse rather than recycling—although it is on the decline, I would hasten to add. However, I would be very happy to make that information available to you: about the state of the UK industry and also the published EU project OUVERTES—the name of the European-funded project—which also identifies what barriers existed at that point in time. I have other suggestions as to why there are physical limitations as to the amount currently being collected in the UK and I will try to summarise them very briefly. The charity shops have a limited capacity. That is one of the three main points. There are 7,000 charity shops; they probably collect around 120,000 tonnes each year. If we are going to collect more, there is obviously a physical limit there. The number of textile banks could be increased, but there are problems there. We possibly need to look at the reinstatement of the FORT Agreement, the Forum on Recycled Textiles Agreement, which the industry did sign up to some years ago and which worked successfully for a number of years, but which has now fallen by the wayside. All signatories to this agreed to have one textile bank operator at each site and that reduces the environmental impact of collections. I am sure that you have been to supermarkets where you have seen several different operators operating at the same bank, and it does not make environmental sense for that to be happening. It would also help if there was a greater transparency in how the industry works. I think it is fair to say that if you ask a member of the public what they think happens to their item of clothing once it is donated to a charity shop or through a textile bank, they probably think that either it is sold in the charity shop itself or, if it is not sold, it is transported by the charity, free of charge, and then handed out to the needy in developing countries. I am surmising there, but that is certainly how I used to see the industry. If we said to people, "The items of clothing are sold and it is good for business; good for the environment; good for employment in this country; good for employment in Africa, in Asia and Eastern Europe" many would be surprised but there are many things to be celebrated from it, and I think that greater transparency would help us to promote textile collection in this country.
Q539 Lord Haskel: The recycling industry, the shoddy business, in this country has always been a very low-quality business, of course. Where there is a real high-class, top-quality business is in Prato in Italy. The secret there, as I understand it, is the detailed sorting of the fabrics and the way the industry is organised. Do you see a possibility of upgrading the possibilities here in Britain to that quality, or should we just concentrate on sending our waste to Prato and leaving them to sort it and deal with it?
Mr Wheeler: The bottom line, as with anything, is that it has to pay. If we can make it pay, then it can be done in the UK. The businesses here are probably some of the best sorters in the world, but it has to be worth its while. Currently, with prices as they are, people are stopping sorting in the UK. A number of traders, including the Salvation Army/Kettering Textiles here, now export unsorted, and a number of our members are doing exactly the same—because it is just not financially viable at the moment. However, if it can be made to pay then, yes, I think that we could do it in this country. There are very good examples here in London where people are doing excellent sorting operations and employing hundreds of people. So it can be demonstrated, yes.
Mr Ozanne: I ought to make this point, in defence of the Salvation Army Trading Company. The first call on any of our clothing is humanitarian: the point of need in this country, through our 800 community units. Prisoners being released after a life term; we sent tonnes of clothing into Yorkshire and Gloucestershire last year. We make no bones of the fact, however, that once we are happy that we have met the humanitarian needs as best we can in this country, the clothes are then exported to Eastern Europe where mainly—a broad statement—they are bought by people who cannot afford new clothing. I would therefore agree with Alan that we need absolute transparency, to gain public confidence.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: It has been claimed that the availability of cheap, fashionable clothes fuels today's throw-away culture and encourages consumers to buy cheap items, as we have heard earlier, and then dispose of them before the end of their life. Is it realistic to try to reduce consumption and, if so, how can consumer behaviour be changed? I am sure that this jacket is about 15 years old! But then I was brought up during the war and so I did not throw things away. How do we get back to that idea?
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