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CURRENT LOCATION: Belgium

LOCAL TIME: 10h35

LOCAL TEMPERATURE: 20 degrees

CURRENTLY READING: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

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Hi there,

Welcome back to Greetings From, which this time returns to an already familiar destination: Karaja. The occasion? The publication of my third scientific article (you can read the full version here), which summarizes a first part of my findings from the last two years. Today’s edition aims to break down my article into understandable parts to ensure that I can reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they have a background in fashion or sustainability. My work can only make sense if people can understand it.

My PhD | What is the purpose of doing one?

Well, great question to get started with! It took me a while to believe that doing a PhD is actually valuable. I imagined myself sitting in a grey laboratory (including lab coat), writing away on my computer, doing tests, and delivering a 200 + page manuscript that would collect dust on shelves, never seeing the daylight. Indeed, what could ever be the purpose of something like this? Well I can assure you that this is not how my PhD has been going. Over the past two years I have been able to do transformative field research, meet with countless people, travel around, have life-changing exchanges, learn about different cultures, habits and customs, all while keeping a constantly evolving diary (both written and visual), so I can translate all of my impressions into articles (max 10 pages) that will each form a chapter of my final manuscript. Breaking down an enormous (and quite daunting) task into bitesize chapters. Besides the academic part, doing a PhD is requiring you to keep challenging yourself, your brain (especially!) and your mental ability to continuously stretch yourself into new understandings and perspectives.

A turning point in my “research” | What made me shift the focus of my work

When you ask people to define durability you mostly get something about “strength”, “quality” or “resistance”. Basically the idea that something can last lifetimes. But what if, in the case of garments and textiles, this might just be the problem? Let’s illustrate this with a clear example. Before garments enter the store, they are tested in laboratories to ensure their quality is sufficient. These tests include: pilling, tear strength, tensile strength and multiple washing cycles. Generally when these tests are performed on synthetic fibres, such as polyester, the results are very good. Why? Well they are a type of plastic (made from fossil fuels, yikes!) with the fabrics woven from fibres of infinite length (called filaments) making them very very strong. Natural materials such as cotton and silk often perform less good in these tests, as they are more fragile and have a shorter fibre length (think of a small cotton ball for example). Great! That’s easy you might think: Let’s focus on synthetic materials, lab results proof it, they will last the longest. But that’s not where the story ends.

When we went to Ghana in 2023 and visited the Kantamanto market (you can read my newsletters on that life-changing experience here and here) one statement kept coming back and really stuck with me: “We don’t want any polyester garments as they have no value to us”. This means that the garments that are described as “strong” or “durable” in the Global North are considered worthless in the regions where they most often end up after their first phase of use (mostly Global South countries). The result? These garments are not optimally integrated into the circular flows (such as reuse, repair, upcycling) and often end up in landfills or, even worse, in natural environments such as beaches. May I remind you that these materials are fossil fuel-based plastics that cause direct environmental pollution, including the release of microplastics into the waterways, which end up in the food chain and eventually in our bodies.

So yes great, polyester might perform well on durability tests in a laboratory, but what does that have to do with real life? Indeed, not much.

My New Article | Presented at the PLATE Conference in Aalborg, Denmark

For the past two years I have been busy with setting up the upcycling hubs in Sumba, as I already shared widely in my previous newsletters (have a look hereand here). In parallel, I have also been conducting many interviews together with my.co-authors in 5 different regions. In total 73 participants answered garment durability related questions to get a global perspective through different communities. From France and Norway in the Global North to Ghana, Indonesiaand South Africa in the Global South, we met with experienced professionals who are working as designers, upcyclers, resellers, activists or recyclers to get their points of view about garment durability.

Lasting on average around 45 minutes it soon became clear that every single person held so much knowledge and interesting perspectives that one article would not be enough to include them all. We thus chose different angles to approach the gathered data with. Last week a first article got published and I was able to present it at the PLATE Lifetime Conference in Aalborg, Denmark which was a wonderful way to connect with like-minded researchers and receive feedback on my own work. The article focuses on upcycling and how local approaches could be a solution for making garments last all across the globe. Upcycling was chosen because it came up so often during the interviews highlighting it as a possible solution for the global textile waste crisis. Today, I want to walk you through the article’s three key findings.

(1) Garment Durability is Dynamic | And not Something Static

Reflecting on the above revelation regarding the issue with linking garment durability to physical strength tests made us rethink its meaning in connection with (and not separate from) current real-life conditions. The reality is that Accra is still receiving over 15 million garments a week, often made of synthetic fibres by cheap ultra-fast fashion brands that don’t give the local community any opportunity to make a living from. When asking the participants about the meaning of garment durability, the aspect of change often comes up. It is even perceived as a key characteristic of durability, suggesting that transforming a garment’s appearance through remanufacturing or upcycling can make it last, rather than a physically strong garment resisting any type of change. Hence why, in the case of textiles and garments we argue that change is inherently part of durability’s meaning, and that it is an ongoing interaction between the garment and its changing environment(s) and user(s), enabling it to move through different life cycles via the practices of care, mending, and repair1.

Basically opposing the idea that we should make extremely strong garments to fix the fashion issue. When those garments are not worn (which in today’s age of overconsumption is often the case), investing in making them physically as strong as possible is practically useless. Am I saying we should go for cheaply made clothes? Not at all! My message here is: stop buying, start wearing.

(2) Materials Matter | Rethinking “Waste”

Most interviewees identified that upcycling involves working with textile “waste”. The concept of “waste” is something I don’t like to refer to, and rather go with the term discarded (or soon-to-be) discarded materials. This enhances the fact that while one person might consider a certain material worth discarding, someone else might still see value in it. Take a process like upcycling, which most often starts with a garment, drastically changing the approach compared to traditional design. These restrictions are often identified as enhancing the creative process. However, this comes with its limitations as upcycling low-quality garments and materials is deemed almost impossible, once again reinforcing the findings of the Kantamanto market community in Ghana: cheap synthetic and polyester materials have almost no (upcycling) value.

Another interesting view we got was this idea of “the right to upcycle”, meaning that at what point do we have the right to cut up a garment, that is still in a perfect condition, for upcycling purposes? The invested resources to do so, and generated waste from that process should be considered. Are the net impacts at the end positive?

(3) Locality influences Upcycling | It’s done differently everywhere

Thirdly, local conditions clearly influence the approach to upcycling. Across all regions upcycling means transforming a material into something else. However, how this is practically done and what the result will look like depends completely on the local conditions such as available skills, infrastructure, climate, culture and the product need. While someone in Paris might be using the same techniques as someone in South Africa, the outcome will be different, just as it should be to ensure it is appropriate for the local conditions.

Respondents argue that products are ideally upcycled in the communities or areas where they are worn, supporting economic localization. However, a small upcycling brand did mention the difficulty of keeping the local aspect in mind when sourcing similar-looking materials, mostly garments. This risks generating additional emissions due to shipping materials around.

The Conclusion | What to Retain and what You can Do!

Based on our findings we defined Local Upcycling as the following: a process in which materials and garments that are considered worth discarding in their current state are transformed into a product of higher value that is suitable for the local environment, eliminating the need for a new product.

Fiew quite the mouthful. Let me break it down. The upcycling process should start with materials that have already been, or soon will be discarded. Around those a design is created to transform them into products of higher value, suitable for the local environment in which they are made (or will end up). Most importantly, thanks to this upcycled product no new product has to be made. The latter is a point I really wish to stress as I hate seeing fashion brands add upcycled capsules to their collection, instead of using those pieces to replace others. We don’t need to add any new clothes, on the contrary, we should focus on slowing down and producing way way way less. Because if we cannot address the core of the issue, what are we doing then?

What can you do? Take the responsibility to educate yourself about the facts of the industry (start here and here), support NGO’s working on it (the Or Foundation’s Speak Volumes Campaign for example) and stop buying. The most sustainable garment is the one you already have in your wardrobe.

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Talk soon,

Hestie -x-

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