BlockTexx, Formary collaborate on textile waste

Australian fashion technology company, BlockTexx, is collaborating with New Zealand textile research company, the Formary, to develop strategies and workflow models for recycling and re-purposing the textile waste – a rapidly worsening worldwide problem with fast fashion and high consumption driving the creation of one hundred billion garments each year.

BlockTexx founders, Adrian Jones and Graham Ross are in Auckland to attend the Circular Economy Summit, a collaboration between the Sustainable Business Network’s Circular Economy Accelerator and WasteMINZ.

“Australia and New Zealand, like the rest of the world, face enormous challenges to address the textile waste created by fast fashion,” says Ross. “The Formary is a leader in this space and we believe our focus at BlockTexx on using technology to unlock the immense value in textile waste along the entire supply chain strongly complements the Formary’s expertise.”

Ross joined a line-up of world-leading experts and practitioners presenting at the summit on August 29, and demonstrated the value the blockchain technology can bring to the circular economy.

Bernadette Casey, Creative Director of the Formary, says “On August 1 the world had consumed a year’s worth of resources in just seven months (www.overshootday.org). It is now crucial that we move away from the current linear clothing model that churns out 100 billion units a year, to a system where we draw fewer natural resources and capture far greater value from the clothing we currently discard.”

Peter Thompson, CEO, the Formary, Sustainable Business Network Board member on the SBN Circular Economy Advisory Group believes “the summit offers a real opportunity to accelerate the growing movement towards circularity in the NZ economy unlocking billions of dollars of value that is currently lost. The only way we can solve the massive challenges of global warming and resource scarcity is through collaboration and we are excited to be joining forces with the team at BlockTexx, combining textile, technology and marketplace expertise to advance the clothing industry to a resource respectful, financially valuable circular system.”

Textile waste is an enormous and rapidly worsening worldwide problem with fast fashion and high consumption driving the creation of one hundred billion garments each year. Less than one per cent of global textile waste is recycled, most is shipped to developing countries where the vast majority ends up in a landfill. As part of the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment, 94 global fashion brands including H&M and Adidas have committed to addressing the ‘take, make and dispose’ approach to textile manufacturing, including increasing the use of recycled textiles across their product range.