Policy 3. Eliminate waste in all points of the supply chain.
Apparel production, distribution, and retailing generate waste at multiple stages. Waste includes any material used to produce a product that does not end up in the finished product. By looking closely at the entire process and reducing waste as much as possible, companies can minimize the amount of solid waste entering landfills and the amount of new raw material being manufactured, saving energy, resources, and money.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides guidelines about waste reduction in the apparel industry in its document To Riches from Rags: Profiting from Waste Reduction.1 One significant factor that was identified was eliminating waste during the cutting process. This involves mindful pattern design, selection of fabric at the width that can be most efficiently used with a product’s marker, and utilization of high-quality fabric without flaws.
Finding alternatives for using waste rather than trucking it to landfills is also important. An example of waste utilization is the Nike “Trash Talk” shoe, which has uppers created from salvaged leather and many other features that use existing materials.2 The British company From Somewhere Ltd. uses fabric cutting waste gathered from luxury designer collections to create new garments.3 U.S.-based Martex Fiber Southern Company picks up clippings and cutting and fiber waste4 and recreates new yarns and fabrics that do not need additional dyeing.5
While these examples are product-focused, a significant amount of waste can be reduced in other stages of the process by better engineering and planning. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has studied lean production methods in relation to environmental stewardship. Lean manufacturing creates a culture where waste is minimized, often resulting in reduced use of material, water, energy, and chemicals, as well as less scrap.6 Companies should build on these examples and measure their progress toward reaching the ultimate goal of zero waste.
Packaging is often the part of the product with the shortest span of use, typically ending up in a landfill, gutter, or ecosystem shortly after purchase. Furthermore, excess packaging materials are frequently used to enhance a product’s visibility, unnecessarily drawing on resources that do not affect the product’s serviceability. Using multiple criteria to examine impacts and maintaining a long-term perspective are the first steps to achieving sustainability in packaging. Substantial waste can be removed by designing containers that efficiently use materials, including using minimal packaging to reduce bulk and thus alleviating some of the environmental impacts of shipping. The materials chosen should be the most recyclable or biodegradable ones that are appropriate for the product and task.
One approach to sustainable packaging is Walmart’s Sustainable Packaging Scorecard. Walmart developed its packaging standards out of its “Seven Rs of Packaging” (remove, reduce, reuse, recycle, renew, revenue, and read) as part of a goal to reduce packaging consumption by 5% by 2013. These metrics can be used to track environmental improvements in packaging. For example, the scorecard evaluates all use of recycled content and efficient use of space in shipping.7
Progressive ideas in packaging also come from the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a group of organizations, including such brands as Target and Nike, among many others, committed to minimizing the environmental impact of sourcing, designing, manufacturing, and packaging. The coalition was initiated by the nonprofit institute called GreenBlue, founded to promote the adoption of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry’s “cradle to cradle” design principles. This coalition discovered that substantial waste could be eliminated by looking at the entire life cycle of packaging and has developed helpful guidelines for making their packages as eco-friendly as possible8 Companies should review and implement these guidelines to steer their packaging toward no-container and refillable products. Companies can also use these guidelines to set measurable goals and track their progress.
Waste is also generated when products are not made to required quality and/or safety standards. These products become waste when they fail lab tests and are unable to be shipped to the buyer, are returned by consumers for quality-related reasons, or are recalled for product safety or other reasons. These substandard products are wasteful of a wide range of resources, including time, energy, materials, transportation, and others. There are clear cost incentives to avoiding the waste resulting from low-quality products and to do things right the first time
- Ganiaris, G. & Okun, J. (2001).To rags from riches: Profiting from waste reduction. Available at http://www.epa.gov/region02/p2/textile.pdf [↩]
- http://www.nikebiz.com/media/pr/2008/02/13_Nash.html [↩]
- http://www.fromsomewhere.co.uk/ [↩]
- http://martexfiber.com/; http://www.eco2cotton.com/ [↩]
- http://www.jimtexyarns.com/ [↩]
- http://www.epa.gov/lean/performance/leanfactsheet.htm) Six Sigma is one of the lean manufacturing tools. It provides systematic methods for analyzing processes and can help identify areas where waste is created. ((http://www.epa.gov/lean/thinking/sixsigma.htm [↩]
- http://walmartstores.com/FactsNews/NewsRoom/6039.aspx [↩]
- http://www.sustainablepackaging.org/ [↩]
