Denim brands including Ateliers & Repairs, Blue of a kind, Fairblue Jeans, Outland Denim and Guess have joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Jeans Redesign.
The Jeans Redesign was developed by the British circular economy charity’s Make Fashion Circular initiative and started in July (read also here). It contains guidelines that define minimum requirements for durability, material properties, recyclability and traceability of clothing. The guidelines are based on closed-loop principles to ensure that jeans last longer, are easy to recycle and are manufactured in ways that benefit the environment and the health of textile workers.
In addition to announcing new participants, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has expanded the guidelines to allow fabric mills to participate in the project. In addition to meeting the other relevant Jeans Redesign guidelines, ZDHC Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals factories must implement wastewater guidelines, including testing and reporting, and produce no more than 0.025 m³ of wastewater per yard. The latest fabric mill participants include Artistic Miliners, Demco, Denim Expert, Denim Village, Frontline and Soorty.
The guidelines build on existing efforts to improve jeans production, including the open source guide produced following the joint initiative of C&A and Fashion For Good to develop C2C Gold Certified jeans. They have been developed with insights from more than 40 denim experts from science, brands, retail, manufacturers, collectors, sorters and NGOs. The first pair of the redesigned jeans will be available in stores by 2020.
Make Fashion Circular lead Francois Souchet said: “More companies joining the Jeans Redesign demonstrates the appetite in the industry for practical solutions that support the transition to a thriving fashion industry, where all our clothes are used for longer, are made from safe and renewable materials, and are made to be made again. This kind of industrywide shift needs companies from across fashion to work together. Fabric mills are vital to this transformation and we are excited to bring them on board as part of the Jeans Redesign.”
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