Lounge
That viscose shirt is harming the planet
Summary
Nicole Rycroft of Canopy, which works to protect forests, believes India has the answer to the world’s textile waste problem
Let’s say you are shopping for clothes and a T-shirt catches your attention. It’s in a lovely bright teal but the tag reads “100% polyester". That’s plastic, you remind yourself. There’s a yellow cotton blouse on another shelf but you don’t want to wear something that took thousands of litres of water to make. Then you come across a black polka-dot dress. You are sold, more so because it’s made from soft-silky viscose, a fabric often marketed as “eco-friendly" as it is made using natural materials.
That’s actually a big problem. Most viscose is produced using the wood pulp of trees, often sourced from ancient forests. “About 300 million trees are logged every year worldwide to make viscose. Forests, which are essential in the fight against global warming, are cleared for wood pulp, which is then chemically treated to make those silky clothes," says Nicole Rycroft, an Ashoka fellow and founder-executive director of Vancouver-based non-profit Canopy.
Founded in 1999, Canopy works towards raising awareness about the impact of the supply chain—the network of people and companies involved in turning raw materials into finished products and getting them to your doorstep—on forests, how viscose production decimates forests, and to promote forest-friendly alternatives. They promote alternative solutions for paper, paper packaging and fashion, among other sectors. Over the years, the non-profit has worked with companies like Inditex (Zara is a subsidiary), Flipkart, H&M, LVMH, Uniqlo and Anita Dongre to suggest ways to reduce dependence on old-growth trees. “People understand the link between forests and paper, but not forests and clothes," says Rycroft.
Rycroft spoke to Lounge in September when she was in Delhi to present a paper, Unlocking India’s Next Gen Economy: The Untapped Investment Frontiers in Material Substitution in India’s Textile and Pulp and Paper Industries, at an investment forum run by the India Impact Investors Council. Rycroft discusses India’s potential as a leading producer of eco-friendly, next-gen fabrics and how viscose is as bad for the environment as cotton and polyester. Edited excerpts from the interview:
Also read: Fashion industry’s biggest contradiction: sustainable clothes
Is circularity—reusing and regenerating clothes for as long as possible to reduce environmental impact while creating value—the answer to solving the problem of textile waste?
We have two existential crises—the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. What is driving both is not that we have an environmental problem. Humanity is the problem. We have a consumption problem. We have built a culture that is addicted to consumption.
People need to decouple from consumption. The population will continue to grow, we will continue to wear clothes, consumption will continue to be a part of modern life. So how do we change current production systems that are pushing our ecological systems past their limits?
That’s where circularity comes into play. We can no longer afford these supply chains built over the past 150 years which take trees of forest ecosystems, feed them in at one end, make a product, and then send the same products to the landfill. In nature, there’s no such thing as waste, right? It is give-and-take in nature, but here we are just taking.
What does an ideal supply chain look like?
Supply chains of today can be characterised as take, make, waste. There’s a taking from the natural world, like a virgin material, be it trees, hibiscus or virgin cotton. It’s fed into a manufacturing system. Then at the other end, once it’s past its utility, it’s sent to this landfill somewhere with no consequence and we don’t have to think about it again.
An ideal supply chain is one where materials that are currently being treated as waste—like straw after the food grain harvest, textiles after they’re cut and given shape—are integrated back into the supply chain. They’re captured and processed back into next season’s clothing and the packaging it gets sent in.
Could India be a centre and take the lead on this?
India has an extraordinary opportunity to be an early leader in producing low-carbon materials. There’s a tradition of upcycling and culture of innovation here as well as entrepreneurialism that’s unique. We are working with companies across India to build such fabrics. Plus, India has an abundance of feedstock. It is among the highest producers of agricultural residues (like wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, corn stalk and rice straw) that can be used to make next-generation low-carbon paper, packaging and viscose and other textiles for the Indian and global markets. These materials, derived from agricultural residues, discarded textiles and food waste, can not only reduce reliance on forests but also drive a circular economy.
Now, combine all this with the fact that so much global textile production already takes place here (brands like Zara and H&M have manufacturing centres) and it becomes clear why India is so attractive.
Viscose is generally promoted as a ‘green’ fabric...
Viscose is the third-largest textile type (after polyester and cotton) in terms of use. Like the other two, there are significant environmental issues with viscose as well.
Cotton is a water hog, plus the extensive use of pesticides. Polyester is fossil fuel-derived.
With viscose, you have the impact on forests and of course, the intensive use of chemicals, water and energy. When it comes to producing viscose, about 20% of the tree put in at the front end ends up coming out the other end as the actual fibre.
What solutions are you suggesting when it comes to raw materials?
At the moment, we’re in a bit of a transition period. We’re taking the most critical forest ecosystems out of the fibre basket and ensuring that the forest fibre going into viscose production is not coming from high-carbon and biodiverse forests. It’s coming from eco-certified plantations (farms that follow eco-friendly practices like organic farming without any use of chemicals) for the most part or forests that are being logged sustainably.
There’s a globally recognised (Germany-based) Forest Stewardship Council, for example, that offers a certification scheme as a measure to provide some guarantee that the forest product is not coming from places that it shouldn’t be coming from. That’s currently the only such certification at this scale in the world.
At the moment, the only perk of having eco-friendly viscose is that we are using 60% less water. We have not studied the afterlife. But in terms of circularity, it can be put back into the textile recycling stream.
There is now tech that can break a piece of printed fabric and turn it into a different type of printed fabric. There are technologies across the world, including in India and Europe, that can break down existing textiles or food waste, to the molecular level and then reconstitute it back into a material. For example, you can take cotton and reconstitute it, so that it performs like a classic viscose. This kind of circularity can help ensure that there’s lesser textile waste.
Why isn’t it happening then?
There’s need for capital investment. With the Indian government aiming for a huge economy and encouraging global companies to invest here, India will probably become the leader in producing next-gen fabrics in five years. It’s quite possible.
Also read: The latest brag in fashion? A secondhand luxury bag
