OnceMore® produce high-quality dissolving pulp made of blended textile waste and wood from sustainably managed Swedish forests. OnceMore® is a part of Södra, Sweden’s largest forest owners’ association, which has a world leading industry that processes forest raw material into renewable products.

Södra and OnceMore has developed a position paper where we compile what we believe should be done and what changes we consider necessary in the form of political proposals and instruments within a subject. The position will serve as a tool for the revision of policy and regulations.

The forest: Key to a renewable and circular textile industry

For generations, wood and pulp solutions have helped build our society. Today we continue to refine these products of the forest, but at the same time we keep discovering new, exciting uses for the wonderful renewable raw material that is wood. Building systems, biomethanol and textile pulp are just a few examples. We use every part of every tree to create the greatest benefits for everyone.

As we refine and develop the forest’s products for a more sustainable society, we occasionally encounter issues and challenges where we see a need for change. In this summary, we highlight the main issues and needs we see to contribute even more to the textile industry’s green transition.

The textile industry must change

By 2050, the need for new textile fibres is expected to more than double. Today’s textile industry is one of the most resource-intensive and polluting industries in the world and depends primarily on fossil-based synthetic fibres and water-intensive cotton. Only a small percentage of the world’s textile fibres are based on raw materials from the forest and only a fraction of all the millions of tonnes of textile waste is recycled. Many Swedish fashion companies have high sustainability goals and long-term ambitions to create renewable and circular textiles. Meeting these goals will require renewable and circular raw materials that are not fossil-based. Replacing some of the fossil raw material with renewable raw material from the forest will have the added advantage that the renewable material also binds carbon dioxide as it grows. Södra wants to be involved and to contribute to the textile industry’s transition journey.

Textile waste can become much more

1 January 2025, all EU member states must collect textiles separately, according to the revised Waste Framework Directive. But today, there is no national system to collect textile waste separately from other waste. Households mainly sort textiles for the purpose of selling them second hand and much of the other textiles that could be recycled end up in incineration.

Södra’s chemical recycling of textiles is a solution to the challenge of less than 1 per cent of textiles being fiber to fiber recycled. The fact that we can also recycle mixed textiles, which make up a large part of the world’s textile production, makes Södra’s recycling method groundbreaking.

In our process, cotton is separated from polyester. The polyester is currently used for energy recovery and thus contributes negatively to Södra’s climate impact. We pay emission allowances for polyester as there is currently no technology to make it circular for anything other than energy recovery, even though we did not put the polyester on the market.

The political debate on textiles tends to focus one-sidedly on reuse in order to achieve a more circular textile industry. Reuse is good, but it is only part of the solution; political solutions must also include recycling and sorting. Above all, how textiles are sorted really matters.

Södra’s recycling process focuses on textiles that cannot be used again. To be able to sort for recycling, we need textiles sorted based on fibre content, but also textiles sorted by colour and dyeing technology. Here, textiles need more reliable labelling and better technology so we can read their fibre content. In the future, digital labeling will be important as it will be able to contain information about environmental performance, materials, chemical composition, product images, country of manufacture, care instructions, etc., and enable reading in a large-scale automatic sorting facility.

The need to recycle textiles will increase, as it will not be possible to reuse all of them. With a future ban on the incineration of textiles, the waste stream will increase. It is important to think about renewable material choice and material composition already at the design stage to increase the possibility of a renewable and circular textile industry.

 

Södra wants to see the policy instruments for textiles broadened and focus on more steps in the value chain from renewable raw material to textile product and from waste to textile product. This work needs to take place both in Sweden and in the EU. Below are some of the initiatives we consider to be priorities:

In Sweden:

• The public sector need to take the lead by setting requirements for sustainable textiles in public procurement.
• Incentives must be created to use sustainable textiles in the production of new textile materials.
• Swedish universities should place greater emphasis on renewable materials and circular design in relevant education.
• A government inquiry should be appointed to compile the results of existing investigations and review the possibility of more concrete measures and instruments that promote sustainable textiles.
• The Government, in its national interpretation of future producer responsibility, should harmonize with the member states of the EU.

 

In the EU:

• The EU should define and harmonize from a global perspective what is meant by sustainable textile and circular textile.
• The EU should develop a standard, such as the standard for Paper for recycling EN643, European voluntary standards through CEPI, in order to be able to sort textiles efficiently and to achieve a uniform fraction system in Europe.
• The EU should introduce a harmonised producer responsibility for the internal market.
• The EU should launch systems for transparency and traceability through certifications that are possible to implement in a global value chain.
• Performance requirements for textiles should be based on the quality rather than quantity of collected data with as much data being collected as possible.
• Regulatory compliance must be significantly improved in textile labelling if the legislation is to have the intended effect.
• Until digital markings are in circulation, the physical labelling of fibre content needs to be better and clearer.