Sustainability issue: Waste
According to Evrnu, it takes over 700 gallons of water to produce a cotton-shirt. A large problem in this water use is the amount of water needed to irrigate the crop. However, the manufacturing process also requires water. Rather than recycling these water-intensive textiles and developing a circular economy for textiles, much of it goes to waste. For example, the U.S. wastes 12 million tons of textile waste each year.
Technology:
- Evrnu has created a patent that takes old garments, shreds them, break down the molecules, and engineers a new fiber.
- The fiber can be used to create new premium garments. In doing so, the technology would create a diversion in the supply and life cycle chain of textile garments.
- Evrnu assumes that a typical life-cycle of the textile is as follows: farm ->yarn -> fabric -> dye -> cut & sew -> retailer -> customer -> landfill. Evrnu could work with large fashion retailers to ensure that they create a closed loop process.
- At the end of the lifetime of a garment, any recuperated clothes could use the Evrnu technology to create new fiber turn it into yarn and recreate a new life cycle for the textile.
Source:
Article title: Evrnu Recycles Old Cotton Garments into New Fibers
Website name: Ecouterre
Link: http://www.ecouterre.com/evrnu-transforms-garment-waste-into-useable-bio-based-fibers/
Company website: https://www.evrnu.com
Stakeholders:
- Evrnu company
- Retail fashion companies and their suppliers
- Society/communities
- Governments
- NGOs
Deployment/Implementation:
- To deploy the technology the patent first needs to be secured.
- Evrnu will then have to work with big fashion retailers (as well as smaller ones in the long-term) to help them achieve a circular business model.
- While the technology seems sound, the largest barrier to achieving these circular business models are the customers themselves. Evrnu’s technology seeks to recycle and repurpose post-consumer cotton textile waste. However, this requires fashion retailers to incentive consumers to recycle their old garments in store rather than selling them, donating them, or throwing them in the landfill.
