Levi's releases most sustainable jeans to date
Image credit: Levi's
Today, Levi Strauss & Co launched Levi's®’ most sustainable jeans yet —
made with organic cotton and Circulose®, a
breakthrough material made from 20 percent recycled denim and 20 percent
sustainably sourced viscose.
The Levi’s recycled denim collection — available as part of the Levi’s®
Wellthread™ line in Men’s 502™ and Women’s High Loose styles — is the
result of a unique collaboration between Levi’s® and
re:newcell — the Swedish innovators behind Circulose,
marks a significant milestone in the fashion industry’s transition to
circularity. Its like-for-like fiber input means the garment can itself be
recycled through chemical recycling processes; and production of the garments
greatly reduces the water, chemical and CO2 footprint associated with
conventional denim.
Expanding on ongoing efforts by the fashion industry to overhaul the
resource-intensive and polluting processes behind conventional denim production
— including the creation of C2C Gold Certified™ jeans by both
C&A
and G-Star
Raw,
and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular
initiative
— the new, recycled jeans represent over five years of research in circular
denim design.
Transforming fashion through materials innovation
Join us as leaders from Crocs, Hilos, Marchon Eyewear, Planet FWD and Target discuss real-world examples, practical strategies, and supply chain considerations for developing eco-friendly clothing, shoes, and accessories that minimize waste and protect the planet — Tuesday, Oct. 15, at SB'24 San Diego.
“We want to recycle Levi's® jeans in a way that doesn't diminish their quality.
By collaborating with re:newcell, our garment-to-garment recycling takes an
important step forward,” notes Una Murphy, Levi’s® Senior Designer for
Innovation. “Recycling keeps garments out of landfills and minimizes the use of
natural resources. We're transforming old jeans into high-quality materials,
moving us beyond traditional cotton recycling, which shortens and breaks fibers.
By using high-quality fiber, Levi's® jeans last longer, and designing for
circularity allows our old jeans to become new jeans again and again.”
Designed in a way that maximizes recyclability so it can be regenerated into a
new jean again, each part of the jeans — trims, thread, etc — is carefully
calibrated to ensure it meets recycling specifications, allowing it to have a
second life when it's worn out. This approach will not only help Levi’s® and
the fashion industry to reduce dependency on virgin materials; but at their end
of life, these recycled denim garments can then be put back through re:newcell’s
recovery system and yield viable material output for future use.
“This is a sustainability challenge that we’ve been wrestling with for years, so it’s really exciting to see an aspirational concept become a familiar pair of Levi’s jeans,” says Paul Dillinger, Levi’s VP of Global Product Innovation. “The fashion industry has long been chasing the potential of the ‘circular economy.’ The jeans we’ve made in collaboration with re:newcell prove that it can be done.”
Learn more about Circulose and Levi’s new recycled denim collection …
Dockers® celebrates 10 years of Water<Less® with limited khaki collection
Image credit: Dockers
Also today, another Levi Strauss brand, Dockers®, launched a special
collection highlighting the 10-year anniversary of the company’s
Water<Less® techniques. Water<Less significantly reduces water
use
in production — specifically the dyeing and finishing processes — and has
helped save more than 3.5 billion liters of water since its introduction in
2010.
The Dockers® 10 Year Water<Less® collection features Dockers’ popular Alpha
Khakis,
as well as a Spread Collar Button-Up
Shirt,
Utility Button-Up
Shirt,
a
t-shirt,
and a
hoodie.
While Dockers says 47 percent of its current line is already produced with
Water<Less methods, this special collection features a washed, worn-in look
which requires specific dyeing and finishing — steps that are normally difficult
without a significant amount of water. Through Water<Less techniques developed
by LS&Co., Dockers can reduce the amount of water normally used in this garment
finishing process by as much as 96 percent. In addition, the collection’s khakis
feature internal trim guides to extend the life of the pants as they wear by
allowing an easy transition from full length khakis into crops or shorts.
Sheep Inc sets new standard for sustainable sweaters
Image credit: Sheep Inc
Meanwhile, British startup Sheep Inc has created a gender-neutral line of Merino wool, ZQ-certified, 100 percent biodegradable sweaters. The company describes itself as the world’s first
carbon-negative
apparel brand (Swedish outdoor footwear company Icebug achieved
climate-positivity
[an interchangeable term] in 2019, as well; but, the more the merrier!) — and it
is pushing the industry to do more in terms of sustainability practices and
educating the consumer as to the true human and environmental cost behind a
product.
Sheep Inc says it achieves full product transparency through a tag on the hem of
each Sheep Inc sweater, which contains an NFC chip that details the garment’s
full journey through the supply chain, and displays the CO2 impact at every
stage of manufacturing — which the customer can access with the tap of a phone
(no app required).
For Spring/Summer 2020, Sheep Inc. introduced a light knit collection made
from New Zealand ZQ-certified Merino Wool. The wool is spun into Cashwool®
yarn in a North Italian mill powered by 100 percent renewable energy. Each
sweater is knitted in an 18-gauge fine knit, using state-of-the-art 3D
knitting machines for minimal waste, then finished with a hand-sewn wool
detail from factory offcuts. Each sweater is 100 percent biodegradable but
designed to last you a lifetime.
The lifecycle assessment (LCA) for Sheep Inc sweaters is calculated by a
third-party auditor (Carbon Footprint Ltd.) and is consistent with Natural Capital Partners'
CarbonNeutral
protocol — the global
standard for carbon neutral programmes. The result is a full cradle-to-grave
carbon footprint that measures every part of the sweater’s journey — farm,
scourer, yarn mill, knitter, usage, end of life and transportation. Any
remaining (currently) hard-to-remove CO2 in the supply chain is then
mitigated by investing in biodiversity projects around the world.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Jul 21, 2020 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST