ESG Green yarn collection – #hackyourjeans platform
16 March 2020
European Spinning Group
Recycled yarn collection made from post-consumer recycled material
European Spinning Group open-end spinning plant AVS Spinning, located in Belgium, spinning the recycled denim fibres into new yarn for the ESG green collection
Campaign photo of the launch of the #hackyourjeans platform in November 2019
Description
As a Belgian spinning mill, European Spinning Group’s “Green collection” is an upcycled yarn collection made out of recycled post-consumer denim or recycled polyester, blended with fibres such as Tencel®, rPET, virgin raw white and dope dyed fibres for various applications and markets.
Post-consumer denim is selectively collected and shredded mechanically by a German partner, into recycled fibres, creating short fibres ideal for open-end spinning.
In addition, ESG has initiated the #hackyourjeans project as an on- and offline platform. The platform focusses on stimulating circular product development and co-creation, raising awareness and social impact by offering full transparency on the production process and by visualising products with online and offline presence. All leveraged by an independent labelling system.
European Spinning Group works together with an independent company, REMOkey, that calculates the environmental savings of different yarns and communicates about it transparently along the supply chain.
Added value
- With the ESG Green collection more than 40,000 kg of post-consumer material were recycled and upcycled.
- Energy and water are saved and less of CO2 emissions is generated due to combining recycled denim with dope dyed fibres. The recycled post-consumer denim collection generates following environmental savings (per kg):
- 50% Denim/50% Tencel: 3485l water, 1.58kg Co2 Emission, 6.32kWh Energy.
- 25% Denim/25% Tencel/ 50% Viscose: 1,743l water, 0.79kg CO2 Emission, 3.20kWh Energy
- 25% Denim/25% Tencel/50% rPET: 1,743l water, 1kg CO2 Emission, 5.40kWh Energy
- Optimising the energy use in spinning mill by using solar energy.
- Designing smarter in terms of disassembly and reuse is taken into account during every step
Challenges
- Difficulties in demand creation: price difference between virgin and recycled materials slows down market introduction and consumer adoption (especially for recycled cotton and polyester).
- Difficult access to funding for SME: high research and investment costs are required to optimize quality of recycled fibres for spinning and new yarn development.
- The existing methods to recycle organic materials involve loss of quality of the original fibre. More research towards recycling methods is needed.
- Lack of global standards and regulations to monitor the production processes and credibility of products on the market.
Partners
