Sustainable Travelbags: 3 Steps to start with.
More and more we see brands switching to polyester made of recycled PET-bottles. This might be a good step to reduce the use of virgin materials, but it’s definitely not the solution we are all waiting for. 95% of all bags and luggage still end up on the landfills despite if they are made of virgin or recycled materials. The pollution of our industry caused by this linear model is deplorable. That’s why I have listed a few suggestions for everybody involved in the creation and production of textile products.
Simplify your assembly
Sustainability starts on the drawing board. And while the first focus should lengthen the life-span of our products (design for re-use and re-pair), we can not neglect how the product finally will be recycled. Most textile products are (still) made where labour is cheap. That’s no surprise. Stitching is still a labour intensive operation. Especially when we look to the construction of todays textile products. They are a time-consuming-assembly of many separate parts and pieces. I’ve seen bags which were made of 40 pieces of fabrics, linings, fillings, reinforcements and many others.
But what needs to be stitched, also needs to disassemble if we want to sort these different materials at the end of life. Economically this is not affordable if we keep designing our textile products as a 1000pcs-puzzle. Instead of having multiple pieces of fabric, we should think how to change our designs to reduce to the very minimum. Less is more. After all, fabrics are soft and ideal to fold and shape to the geometric shape you need. It will reduce your assembly-time significantly and give you the benefits at the end of life.
Mono-materials
The same is valid for the amount of different types of material you use in your product. The lower the amount, the easier it becomes to sort them during recycling. If we don’t sort them effectively (and mix different types), we are downgrading our material due to impurities. So, if we want to secure the availability of high quality materials in the future, we need to design for an effective sorting process.
Most bags are now made of several different materials (polyester, foam, metal, nylon, cardboard, nonwovens, …) which means they all need to be separated in order to recycle. It’s another reason why most bags are not recycled and end up on the landfill. As designers we should strive towards mono-material products.
Buy global, Act local.
Once you simplified your assembly and minimised the amount of materials, your supply chain becomes much easier to manage. This is the point where you can start to evaluate to move your assembly where your market is. I know, in this case some materials won’t be available (yet) locally. So you still might need to ship materials from one location to the other. But at the current transport fees this is still more preferable than filling up containers with finished goods (which takes far more space). But not only your carbon footprint goes down. Local assembly will also increase the control of your stock and your flexibility towards market changes.
Let's start today
We know the road towards a circular economy can and should go much further. More inspiration on this will follow. But the above suggestions are usable for those who are already in business and want to start the sustainable roadmap today. This approach will simplify your supply chain and prepare your portfolio for the next circular step.
The above guidelines are part of the design-strategy we use for RedStars, our own product-lab for sustainable bags. Here we design according a strong principle: 1 material, 1 pattern and 1-minute of assembly.