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You can also only recycle plastic a handful of times, and each time it degrades in quality, until you’re left with the same end-of-life options as always: landfill or incineration. Meanwhile, creating new plastic-free materials from virgin feedstocks is all well and good, but often requires significant input of natural resources like water, land, and energy.
So instead, why not take the very best from both approaches by salvaging leftover, discarded, or waste materials and giving them an unexpected second life? The practice of upcycling — entirely different to recycling — has gained momentum across multiple industries in recent years. A 2021 study by the Fashion & Textiles journal found that up to 80% of leftover material waste in factories could be upcycled into new garments, not to mention the hidden nutritious benefits found in food waste of all kinds. Reusing this perceived waste not only saves on the resources needed to make a virgin product, but also helps stop valuable materials from being burned or sent to the bin, adding toxins to our air, water, and soils.
It makes good business sense too. Reducing waste within a supply chain takes precedence, but waste has commercial value both internally and externally. This includes beauty brands using nutrients from food waste in skincare, through to paper manufacturers extracting fibres from textile offcuts.
Discover five companies upcycling non-plastic feedstocks into materials for use across the packaging and textiles landscape.
of 18-24 year olds in France have purchased at least one upcycled product
Interest in upcycling grew by 128% across business media between 2020 and 2021
Aesthetic shortcomings cost farmers 20% of their annual crop, food which is perfectly safe and viable to consume
With its speedy decomposition and sky-high recycling rate, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Paper made from wood pulp is something we don’t need to change. Trees are one of the most easily renewable resources we have, but paper needs a lot of trees. According to the WWF, the industry accounts for up to 40% of all the industrial wood traded globally. There are schemes and certifications for sustainable forest management, but these can’t always be trusted, and alternative feedstocks would ensure the world’s trees can get on with the job they really need to do: absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.
Enter Mohawk. Founded in 1930, this leading paper manufacturer is leveraging its expertise and experimenting with much more than just water reuse and wind power in its search for sustainability. Rather than relying on the growth and felling of trees, its Mohawk Renewal portfolio uses old Hemp, straw, and recycled Cotton destined for burning or scrapping to make its paper instead. Partnering with both the CBD industry and the textiles industry for its upcyclable waste, Mohawk has produced over 100 tons of Renewal paper since its launch in 2020.
From waxed cloth to baking paper, alternatives to cling film just aren’t quite up to scratch. Going without wrapping sounds good in principle, but food waste is as significant an environmental catastrophe as single-use plastic, and we all need ways to transport food from home to the office and beyond. Great Wrap offers an exciting option with its cling film replacement of the same name.
Made from the skins, slices, and potatoes rejected by the chip industry, as well as other compostable biopolymers, Great Wrap is a strong, transparent, freezer and food-safe wrap that breaks down in soil in less than 180 days. 100% home compostable, it will even disappear in landfill within one to three years if it happens to end up there. Suitable for use in the home, as well as in the restaurant, catering, and shipping industries, this Australian-made material is on track to divert 300,000 tonnes of food waste from landfill by the end of 2023.
The citrus industry is surprisingly wasteful. One million tons of citrus byproducts are produced every year in Italy alone, while 40-60% of a citrus fruit is discarded when consumed. As the largest fruit crop in the world, creating and disposing of this waste is hugely resource intensive.
But Orange Fiber has found another purpose for it through its Tencel & Orange Fiber collection. In partnership with Lenzing, the Italian company extracts Cellulose from citrus fruit byproducts and feeds it into a production line alongside FSC-certified Wood pulp from the Austrian manufacturer. The result is the world’s first Tencel branded Lyocell fibre made of orange and wood pulp, which can be made into a Silk-like material for use across the apparel industry. We have concerns about the scalability of this fibre, notably due to a lack of any progress or updates since 2021, but its existence clearly demonstrates the potential to be found in the seemingly useless food waste we throw away every day.
The burning of crop residues accounts for around 3.5% of global GHG emissions every year. This burning not only emits black carbon, but has huge impacts on both local and national residents of regions where burning is common. In India, for example, up to 98,000 premature deaths were reported every year between 2003 and 2019 as a direct result of this process. German-based company Traceless is going some way to solving the problem with its newly launched fossil fuel-free alternative to single-use plastics. Made from natural polymers extracted from agricultural waste, the material — also called Traceless — is a drop-in swap for common plastic materials used in the packaging industry.
The company’s use of highly abundant waste side streams means Traceless doesn’t compete with crops or forests for land or water use. Able to home compost within two to nine weeks, the material is nutrient rich, returning to the soil toxin free, and can be made into flexibles, rigids, adhesives, and even coatings. The material’s first in-market use case is in partnership with C&A for injection moulded sock hooks.
Cheap, insulating, comfortable, durable, and hypoallergenic — there are many reasons why Cotton is a go-to for the fashion industry. Unfortunately, it’s also a thirsty, land-hungry plant that uses 25% of the world’s insecticides, more than any other crop. Linked to soil degradation and water contamination, as well as an increase in miscarriages and cancers in the people who work with it, it’s a fibre we need to be much more conscious of using and not wasting.
Swedish startup Renewcell sees the value in cotton waste, partnering with textile sorters to recover post-consumer textile waste and turn it into Circulose. Made from 100% waste, Circulose is created by shredding and pulping PCR cotton to create pure Cellulose fibres, which are said to be equivalent in quality to virgin fibres. It’s already on the shelves too, used in Levi’s iconic 501 jeans range, with plans to scale production capacity to 360,000 tonnes by 2025.
