Changemaker: Charlotte Turner, sustainability consultant and educator
The future of fibres. Picture: Natural Fiber Welding
Former Head of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles at Eco-Age, Charlotte Turner has been supporting brands and manufacturers to run responsible businesses with long-term sustainability strategies, create high quality products in the most socially and environmentally just ways possible, and communicate about sustainability for over a decade. She is now an independent consultant, advisor and educator, as well as an Associate Lecturer and has presented at institutions and conferences including the British Fashion Council, Royal College of Art, London College of Fashion, Central St. Martins, Fashion and Textiles Museum, Istituto Marangoni, Conde Nast College and Prince’s Trust Fashion Futures. Charlotte promotes education and knowledge sharing with industry, government, media, consumer and student audiences and participated in the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee Inquiry into the sustainability of the fashion industry.
Bel: With so many materials currently consisting of fossil fuel-based synthetic fibres or requiring intensive processing, what are the most exciting developments in planet-friendly fabrications?
Charlotte: There's a huge amount happening around innovation and technology in the fashion supply chain right now, particularly regarding how we can rethink the fashion system as a whole, ways to better trace and connect supply chains, and how we can cultivate and process fibres and materials with a lower environmental impact.
Lab grown materials are a significant part of this and biomimicry has been on the radar for years, looking to nature to see how we can create better performing products, but now people are talking about natural regenerative systems. This is something that really interests me. It isn’t new but now, in response to decades of globalisation and pollution, we’re realising we need to fix the problems we’ve created by returning to simpler ways of doing things. So, for me, the future is looking back to historical systems and trying to implement those again.
Bel: What do regenerative systems mean in terms of fashion and fibres?
Charlotte: In terms of textiles, regenerative systems apply to both plant-based fibres and animal-based materials such as wool or leather. It means farming systems that work symbiotically with nature, moving away from monocultures and excessive use of chemicals; farming in ways that help to maintain and restore soil health - which then helps to sequester more carbon in the soil. The way we're farming now is rapidly depleting soil health, leaving us with a finite amount of topsoil and releasing CO2 that should be stored in the soil. We’re extracting natural resources at a rate at which the Earth can’t restore them. Regenerative systems can help us mitigate climate change, protect biodiversity, and allow nature to rebuild the resources we use.
Bel: You’ve talked about the potential of natural fibre welding as a response to the use of synthetics in animal-free leather alternatives.
Charlotte: Yes. There’s lots happening with lab-grown materials and animal-free leather alternatives but one of the most exciting innovations I’ve seen is Natural Fiber Welding. Based in the US, they’ve created a technology that can regenerate cellulosic materials to create new fibres and materials without the need to add synthetic inputs for strength. They can turn old cotton garments into new textiles and furniture, but they've also been able to take that process to create an animal-free leather alternative, which is 100% natural. We have a lot of amazing materials available to us now. Pinatex has always been a favourite of mine, one of the reasons being that it creates a new income stream for farmers from materials that would otherwise be wasted. But for a long time, they had to involve PU content for performance, whereas Natural Fiber Welding has been able to do this without any synthetic additions at all from the beginning.
Bel: Looking forward, are people thinking about the future resilience of some of these crops into a destabilised climate?
Charlotte: Yes. We’re having to think a lot more about what is appropriate to grow in different locations, considering how unstable our global climates are becoming. There are already changes we can see. We've got a lot more uptake for bast fibres like hemp, for example, which is a fast, really easy growing crop that doesn't require a lot of intervention and can grow in quite varied climates. Bamboo is also very fast growing and fairly tolerant, but it has been thought of as sustainable for years when, in fact, it’s turned into a fibre using the same chemically intensive process as viscose. You just have to be aware of the conditions in which it's created. Initiatives like Canopy Style are currently working to de-link viscose production from deforestation, which is a huge contributor to climate change and instability. Meanwhile, on the West Coast of the US, warehouses once used to grow marijuana are now being used to grow mycelium materials, in climate-controlled environments on racks. It’s a very efficient way of growing a natural material, which could be scaled up with ease. It’s just a question of investment, and that has to come from brands. But, yes, in terms of resilience and looking at fibre production in unstable climates, we've got to think about resilient natural fibres which can grow without a lot of help whilst supporting soil health and biodiversity - so really regenerative fibres.
Bel: It’s not possible to think about environmental and human rights issues separately. How far do new fabrications take into account the benefits to their workers?
Charlotte: It’s an interesting question. We talk about living wages and fair working conditions for garment workers but that needs to extend to textiles workers as well. In garment production, there’s a huge emphasis on human rights, perhaps because people feel that they can connect with it more. Rana Plaza, for example, is now in mainstream consciousness. But when it comes to textiles, there’s less of a connection. It really depends on the materials you’re making, which are going to impact different people in different places. In farmed fibres, for example, issues include the impact of pesticides on worker health, fair prices for farmers, and organic standards.
What I will flag, however, is that, in the last year or so, human rights issues in the textiles supply chain have become more visible: human rights abuses regarding the Uyghur in China have become part of mainstream discourse. In the past, these are issues that would come up in trade media, in Sourcing Journal and Eco Textile News. That’s no longer true. The visibility of this problem is slowly getting people to think more about the products they’re buying, just like David Attenborough talking about plastic gets people to think more about synthetic fabrics.
Bel: You're also a lecturer. Are young people very aware of these issues?
Charlotte: The level of sustainability literacy has come on leaps and bounds. When I was studying, I was one of four people out of a peer group of about 80 who focused on sustainability, which back then was mainly about hemp and bamboo. Today, students are more aware of the issues, because they see them on a daily basis via social media. The connection they have with the issues is exponentially bigger. And, even if they’re not entirely aware when they come into university, they get a lot more exposure to it earlier on. Rather than what we had which was one recycling project a term, it's ingrained in the curriculum. The engagement, and the level of critical thinking I’m seeing is really impressive, even from first years and even compared to five years ago.
Bel: How much is the technology effectively starting to come up to meet demand for recycling clothing?
Charlotte: Developments are being made in terms of fibre separation and recycling different types of textiles. And more thought is going into designing products for end of life recycling, including removable components or use of mono materials which extend from fabrics to buttons, threads and labels as well.
But we need to be aware that, while we've got a lot of textile collection banks in the UK including collection boxes in high street shops, statistics out there say that an estimated less than 1% is actually being recycled. So, we have to be careful in how we talk about circularity. The term circularity makes it too easy for people and brands to say, well, it’s fine to buy as much as we want because we can chuck it in a ‘recycling bin’ and they’ll be recycled and turned straight into a new garment. That doesn't do anything to help our speed of consumption and the value that we place on products. The root issues are overproduction, over-consumption and this lack of valuing.
Bel: As the British Fashion Council’s Institute of Positive Fashion recent Circular Fashion Eco-system Report has made clear, the industry needs to contract. How it faces up to that is key going forward. Where are the other areas we need to focus on?
Charlotte: When the EAC did their inquiry a few years ago, there were a few different things I felt were key parts of the solution. One of them was marketing regulation. The way that fast fashion is marketed is appalling. The other one was about education from primary school level. There's a real place for connecting schoolchildren with the clothes they wear, thinking about the people in supply chains, but also where fabrics come from and how they’re made. . A few years ago, the London College of Fashion did a project where they grew flax in an outdoor space and then turned it into linen yarn, then into a fabric then into a garment. These are creative ways to get children involved with learning about materials and the fact that finished fabrics don’t grow on trees.
I think every child should attempt to make something, whether it's sewing or knitting. That then helps them to realise the time and effort that goes into making products, and will hopefully make them really value the products they go on to own.
