PANGAIA’s new ‘digital passports’ drive transparency, circularity in fashion
Image credit: PANGAIA
Italian direct-to-consumer, sustainable apparel brand
PANGAIA has partnered with connected products
innovator EON to create ‘digital passports’ for its
products — to enable greater transparency, traceability and circularity in the
fashion industry and inspire responsible consumer choices. Powered by a QR code
and cloud-hosted digital twin, the digital passports reveal each garment’s
unique journey and offer customers access to product-level impact reporting in a
more interactive way.
The digital passports, which are
printed directly onto PANGAIA care labels, unlock a bespoke digital experience
when scanned by a customer’s phone. Designed to simulate the user-experience of
social media platforms, the experience takes the customer on a journey from the
product’s origin through to its purchase, transportation — including provenance
information and mapping of production and distribution facilities — and
aftercare. While PANGAIA already takes steps to report on its products’ impacts
and sustainability credentials, the digital passports will now bring together all product-specific data into one place in a fun and engaging way for consumers.
“It is important to us that information on where and how PANGAIA products are
made is accessible and engaging,” says Chief Impact Officer Maria
Srivastava. “Taking cues from social media, our new digital passports are
putting personalized data around traceability and sustainability at the
fingertips of our customers in a fun and interactive way, so they feel empowered
to make the best possible choices. As well as helping propel us forward on our
own circularity journey, we believe that product digitization is fundamental to
driving industry change and accelerating an Earth Positive future – one which
gives back more than it takes.”
Following in the footsteps of Allbirds’ recent open-sourcing of its Carbon
Footprint
Calculator
to nudge the apparel industry toward greater transparency, PANGAIA’s new
digitized product experience will enable the brand to update customers in
real-time as the breadth of its impact reporting evolves. For example, carbon
and water impact data could be added retrospectively to a digital passport if
the results of a full life cycle assessment (LCA) are pending. PANGAIA says it’s
on track to complete LCAs on 80 percent of its products by 2022.
As PANGAIA is still at the start of its own circularity journey, digital
passports are also helping bridge the gap until the brand can offer customers a
fully circular model. By sharing lifecycle data and aftercare guidance, the
company is hoping to encourage current and future owners to extend the life of
their products and keep them in circulation at the highest value possible, for
longer.
And through EON’s CircularID™
Protocol, PANGAIA is also working
to foster a more circular textile industry by ensuring that circular resale,
recycling and sorting partners can access the data they need to identify,
steward and manage products and materials from one product lifecycle to the
next.
“Through product digitization, PANGAIA is redefining the relationship between
brands, products and customers — pioneering an entirely new model for
sustainable commerce and taking a mission-critical step towards realizing a
fully circular business model,” said EON founder and CEO Natasha Franck. “By
turning each product into a media channel and medium for ongoing customer
relationships, PANGAIA is building transformational relationships with customers
and their products. Simultaneously, they are stewarding each product through a
circular lifecycle and unlocking new revenue streams through new circular
business models such as resale and recycle.”
PANGAIA’s digital passports will debut in its Horizon t-shirt collection,
launching this Thursday. Product landing pages will feature dedicated icons and
messaging to increase consumer awareness around the product digitization and
dedicated customers emails will re-target customers to encourage user adoption.
Throughout 2021, PANGAIA will roll out digital passports in phases across
current and existing product categories, with new lines being added on a bi-monthly basis.
85 apparel brands, suppliers sign onto 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge
Image credit: Rūdolfs Klintsons/Pexels
Meanwhile, Textile Exchange and the Fashion
Industry Charter for Climate
Action
have launched a joint initiative to further spur a shift in the market
towards the uptake of recycled polyester (rPET) and the associated reduction in
greenhouse gases (GHGs).
With 85 brands and suppliers already committed, the 2025 Recycled Polyester
Challenge aims
to catalyze a sea change in the apparel and textile industry — calling on it to
increase the global percentage of recycled polyester from 14 percent to 45
percent at 17.1 million metric tons by 2025. The Challenge continues the
successful acceleration that began with Textile Exchange’s 2017 Recycled
Polyester
Commitment.
The 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge asks brands to commit to the most
ambitious uptake target possible. High percentage rPET commitments from brands
are essential to reaching the 2025 45 percent recycled volume target and for
building critical mass to reach an absolute 90 percent recycled volume share by
2030.
The brands that have committed to date include:
“Since our initial use of recycled polyester in 2005, we have adopted rPET in a
huge way — focusing on adopting 100 percent Preferred Fibers by 2025,” says
Rachel Lincoln, Director of Sustainability at prAna. “By using recycled
polyester, we not only create amazing, high-performance garments; we lessen our
reliance on fossil fuels and prevent plastic from ending up in landfill.”
Why is this important?
Polyester (PET) is the most widely used fiber in the apparel industry,
accounting for roughly 52 percent of the total volume of fibers produced
globally; the apparel industry produces roughly 32 million of the 57 million
tons of polyester used each year. Currently, only about 14 percent of this
comes from recycled
inputs
– predominantly from post-consumer PET bottles.
Textile Exchange says we need to bring the share of mechanically recycled
(or equivalent) fiber/filament within the polyester market from 14 percent to 90
percent by 2030.
With a significantly lower carbon footprint than conventional polyester, rPET or
equivalent needs to comprise at least 45 percent of fashion’s polyester market —
equivalent to roughly 17.1 million metric tons of fiber — by 2025, in order to
stay within the 1.5-degree pathway recommended by the
IPCC.
Today, mechanically recycled polyester from plastic water
bottles makes up the vast majority
of recycled polyester; however, chemical recycling, textile-to-textile
recycling
and other technologies will be a necessary part of reaching the goal. Textile
Exchange recognizes that more data is needed on the GHG reductions associated
with other innovative synthetic
alternatives
and that even with less significant reductions compared to mechanical recycling,
they will be a key part of a market transformation away from fossil fuels. We
will continue to explore roadmap scenarios as impact data evolves and as the
textile-to-textile recycling market matures.
What is required to commit?
Companies committing to this initiative will be required to annually report
their polyester consumption to Textile Exchange’s Corporate Fiber and Materials
Benchmark (CFMB) survey, which will track
progress across all participating brands towards the collective goal. All
information entered into the CFMB survey is entirely anonymous and aggregated
across all annual report participants to show progress.
"At Reformation, we have always taken a strong stance against sourcing
conventional synthetics (aka fossil-fuel fabrics),” says Carrie
Freiman, Director of Sustainability at Reformation. “Taking part in the 2025
rPET Challenge is aligned with our brand’s circularity and climate action
commitments, and is a great show of cross-industry commitment for a more
sustainable future."
Textile Exchange will report annually on the 2025 rPET Challenge, utilizing 2019
volume data as a baseline and a view to accomplishing both
Textile Exchange’s and the Fashion Charter’s overall commitment to staying
within the 1.5-degree pathway.
Learn more about how your brand can take part in the 2025 rPET Challenge
here.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published May 11, 2021 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST