{"id":17667,"title":"What Is Remill?","description":"Everything on the BBC Earth store is circular by design, meaning each product has been made from the start, to be sent back to our suppliers when it's worn out, so they can re-use and re-manufacture the material, making new products from it. They can do this over and over and over again, keeping the material out of landfill and closing the loop on fast fashion.","content":"

Imagine if the t-shirt you are wearing today, makes up part of the t-shirt you're wearing 5 years from now, instead of contributing to landfill. Wouldn't that be something?<\/p>

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Making truly sustainable clothing means considering how our materials and processes affect the planet and everything on it. Every product on the BBC Earth store is designed from the start to be sent back when worn out. New products are made from the recovered material, over and over again. This is called circular fashion. Traditionally, most garments are made in a linear model where resources are extracted, and turned into products that are designed to be thrown away. Lowering impact or buying less slows fast fashion down but it doesn't change the outcome. By working with Teemill, circular design is built into the system from the start and throughout the product lifecycle, which means our products never need to enter landfill. Instead of creating waste, we make new products from it.<\/p>

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When a used t-shirt gets sent back to our suppliers, they take that material, and re-manufacture it into what is called \"Remill fibre<\/strong><\/a>\". You can think of remill products as 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation t-shirts, carefully woven with a combination of new & remanufactured post consumer organic cotton. Even these remill items can be sent back over and over again. This is all made possible by careful design, using pure natural materials, clever technology, and some conscious consumers.<\/p>

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This goes beyond recycling.<\/strong> Circularity & recycling are not two sides of the same coin. Here's why; designing products that are easily recyclable, and made from recycled materials are an important part of the circular economy, but it's about much more than that. Take recycling plastic for example, it can often only be recycled once or twice into a new product because the polymers break down in the recycling process, leading to a weaker material. Now consider the fact that 60% of modern clothing includes plastics like polyester, this makes re-using the material in that garment difficult & uneconomical. In a circular economy, using only natural materials, nothing is wasted, and everything is shared & reused, retaining the material worth of the garment, and instead of delaying waste, new products are made time and time again.<\/p>

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In the UK, only around a third of the 650,000 tonnes of discarded clothes given to charity or other circular fashion initiatives are resold, with the rest being sent off to textile recyclers or the bin. In reality much of it ends up in landfill or incineration either way. Because while recycling leads to a little bit more use out of a material, it doesn\u2019t close the loop and stop the underlying flow of waste, and when more than half of this material flow is made of plastic, that\u2019s tonnes per second of plastic being burned or buried in the name of fashion. Not cool.<\/p>

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All of this means you, our customers, also need to be our suppliers, and we need your help. In return for sending back your worn out garments, we will reward you with store credit for each item you return; a voucher usable across any of the remill brands. Simply scan the QR code on the inside wash care label for freepost return instructions, or click on one of our \u2018Send It Back\u2019 links on our remill page<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>

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TED Talk: Redesigning the fashion industry<\/strong><\/h2>

If you're interested in learning more about how fashion can be a part of the climate change solution, check out this TEDx talk from Teemill co-founder and Queens Award winner, Mart. A positive 15-minute listen for anyone interested in understanding how fashion can be truly sustainable.<\/p>

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