How AI can move us toward a circular textile economy

Textiles are a fundamental part of everyday life and a pillar of the global economy. Where would we be without textiles and the many fabrics we make from them? Clothes are worn by everyone almost all the time and are for many an important way to express themselves. A world without clothing would be like a body without a heart.

Driven by a growing middle class and the fashion phenomenon fast fashion in Western countries, the world’s total volume of manufactured clothing has more than doubled since the turn of the millennium. While a growing middle class is obviously to be desired and should not be blamed for problematic developments within the consumer sphere, fast fashion very much calls for closer inspection.

Fast fashion
‍Fast fashion is the term used for low-priced, trendy clothing, which by dint of rapidly changing fashion trends is worn very few times before being retired at the bottom of the dresser or disposed of entirely. Globally, a piece of clothing or footwear is worn an average of 120 times before it is substituted for a new one, but in the Western world that number is far lower. A 2015 English consumer survey revealed the average woman in Great Britain to wear a piece of clothing as little as seven times before losing interest in it.

A parallel problem is that the clothing industry’s manufacturing technologies have developed significantly slower than its design and marketing capabilities. Fast fashion arose by dint of shortened fashion cycles and lower prices — engendered by almost all production being moved to third world countries — but similar innovation has not gained ground within the methods of production, which remain low-tech, inefficient, and heavily polluting. As a result, fast fashion today stands as a business model with a modern framework for customer appeal and sales, but with an underdeveloped production anatomy. Demand is essentially maximized, but supply can meet it only by means of utilization and preservation of deeply problematic manufacturing processes.

Recycling is just a word
‍Of all materials used in the manufacture of clothing, less than 1% of them are reused in a second manufacturing cycle, leading to an annual value loss of $100 billion. Add to this direct waste, then, the expenses incurred when disposing of clothing and household textile waste in landfills. In Great Britain alone, where more than 300,000 tons of clothing are thrown out annually, $100 million is lost through this practice. USA, Canada, and Mexico combined are estimated to throw out 11 million tons of clothing. 150 billion new pieces of clothing are marketed every year, of which 25% are never used and simply destroyed when not sold.

The linear problem
‍Problematic facts abound: The textile industry depends on fossil fuels — 100 million tons annually — for the manufacture of synthetic fibers, cotton fertilizer, and chemicals for the manufacture and dying of fibers and textiles. Two thirds of all clothing are of fossil origin, 1.2 billion tons of CO2e are emitted annually — more than the airline and shipping industries combined — 50 million tons of chemicals are used throughout the supply chain, and 100 billion cubic meters of water are consumed. Add to these facts that the industry emits 20% of the world's industrial wastewater, that workers are often subjected to risible working conditions, and that global sales and production numbers are expected to triple before the year 2050, and the problems should be clear as day: Consumers’ underutilization, a low recycling rate, and the massive consumption of raw materials in manufacturing comprise a wasteful, linear system that puts enormous pressure on the world’s natural resources and contributes heavily to global warming.

In this huge, global machinery, Jet Sport is of course but a small cog with a correspondingly small influence, but part of operating as a responsible company — meeting ethical laws, rules, and standards affecting society, customers, and employees — is not hiding behind others regardless of one’s relative size. To the contrary, it is acknowledging that all companies in essence take part in a prisoners’ dilemma game, in which selfishness is tempting but the best holistic results actually are achieved through cooperation. That is the point of view from which we endeavor to make Jet Sport’s economy 100% circular.

Resources or stakeholders
‍A ‘circular economy’ denotes an organized economic development which favors not just companies but their surrounding societies and environments as well. It does so by being organically regenerative and gradually seeking to separate financial growth from consumption of limited resources. The circularity is seen in a value chain’s ability and tendency to convert waste products into new products, instead of disposing of them without realizing their recycling potential.

The circular economic development has a background in the theory that companies fundamentally depend on at least one of two possible ‘domains,’ resources or stakeholders, and that they through their actions choose between them. Historically, avaricious and amoral resource consumption has been the business world’s primary source of growth. Such an approach pursues a linear ‘procure-manufacture-discard’ system with maximum growth and minimal regard for anything else. Stakeholders’ expectations and demands of behavior and ethics are repressed or neutralized, and only stockholders’ desire for continuous profits and growth influences managerial decision-making.

The growing consciousness about nature and the fundamental worth of the individual have over the last decades, however, effected a paradigm shift under which the business world to a greater extent is pressured into accommodating stakeholder expectations and demands of sustainability and respect for human rights. Everyone has realized that consumers can choose to not do business with companies they dislike and consequently can influence managerial decision-making even more than stockholders can. Today, the moment a company signals its disregard for consumer expectations, it is rejected in favor of more accommodating competitors.

The circular solution
‍It is estimated that reshaping the textile industry from a linear to a circular economy would prevent an annual global loss of $500 billion. The realization of this requires innovation and cooperation across the industry’s segments — from manufacture, over marketing, to consumer habits. The segments should to any extent possible meet six different, yet connected, criteria:

1. Clothing is designed and manufactured to reflect the individual’s personal style. It is easily accessible, durable, and affordable.

2. Clothing is used until physically worn out. When disposed of, it is recycled to the greatest possible extent.

3. Manufacturing processes run on sustainable energy, and production inputs are based on sustainable resources.

4. Clothing prices reflect the true environmental and societal costs associated with its manufacture.

5. Manufacturing processes regenerate nature’s sustainability and do not pollute the environment.

6. Companies operate with an eye toward strengthening societal cohesiveness. Business partners and employees receive compensation which enables participation in the wider economy.

While Jet Sport neither manufactures nor sells clothing, and therefore escapes much of the criticism aimed at the textile industry, we nonetheless manufacture textile products employing colors and other chemical inputs with the potential for harming people and the environment. For this reason, we look at the above six criteria with great interest and consider how they can guide and inspire us to keep our own house in order. Not all indicated or suggested solutions are relevant to a supplier of fabric embellishments like us, but some are, and these we let guide and inspire us.

We prioritize custom printing and fabric longevity by letting our customers design unique, personal applications with a resilience matching the clothing on which they are printed. A product co-manufactured by consumers themselves is valued more and preserved better over time. Strong durability further enables re-sale options after the product is no longer wanted by its initial designer.

Wind power is a sustainable source of energy that causes less environmental damage than many others. Electricity-producing wind turbines do not cause polluting emissions of CO2 or require water for cooling. While fossil fuels are often used in their manufacture and/or transportation, and wind turbines therefore cannot be said to be 100% environmentally friendly, wind power is nevertheless far more sustainable than coal, oil, and natural gas power — which still comprises 84% of the world’s electricity use. At Jet Sport, sustainable and CO2-neutral wind power comprises 100% of our electricity purchases.

Fair compensation and minimal pollution are among our core values. We are Global Organic Textile Standard-certified, having the world’s leading textile standard’s guarantee that our employees are compensated in accordance with Denmark’s broader price levels and that waste products, chemicals, and wastewater are managed responsibly. One area in which we still have room for improvement is in our products’ price setting. Our most environmentally friendly products are generally more expensive than our less environmentally friendly products, by dint of which we still don’t — as recommended in the fourth of the above listed criteria — price our products congruent with their true environmental and societal impact.

Artificial intelligence
‍A vital part of a successful transformation from a linear economy to a circular is the recycling of products and materials, optimization of business models, and elimination of waste and pollution. To this end, artificial intelligence is viewed by many as a handy pathfinder, so let’s here take a closer look at what AI is and how it can help us toward our stated goal.

What is artificial intelligence?
‍Artificial intelligence is a broad category of technology under which lifeless objects are autonomous, intelligent, and productive. It describes a systematic accumulation of knowledge about how computer programs and systems learn to perform sapient activities such as logical thinking and knowledge acquisition. Central to AI, and what separates it from standard software, is its ability to learn from experience, i.e. forming new, self-generated behavior patterns on the basis of registered data points in the form of images, video, text, sound, or numbers. In the business world — especially manufacturing — easily definable and targeted tasks such as route planning or song recommendation are typically aided by AI. Software so limited in scope and objectives is called ‘narrow AI.’ Narrow AI is contrasted by the far more complex, ambitious, and human-like ‘general AI.’

How can artificial intelligence advance the circular economy?
‍Artificial intelligence can create, support, and optimize the regenerative business models central to the circular economy. Among the technology’s largest focus areas is design optimization, a domain viewed as having a high profit potential. Based on large amounts of data, AI can suggest new designs or adjust existing ones, after which a human designer can review and implement them to the extent that they are innovative and useful.

Development of AI can never be effectuated by software alone but requires comprehensive cooperation with humans. A computer program needs external frames and reference points to develop new behavior patterns. It does not, e.g., possess innate knowledge of how a game of chess is won but depends on first being instructed by humans about the importance of protecting the king, the queen’s importance over that of the pawn, that the bishop can only more diagonally etc. Only after determining such fundamental rules and objectives can the program begin developing and testing new and improved patterns of behavior.

AI can advance a circular textile economy by e.g. developing algorithms for improved inventory management and logistics, more efficient use of fabrics and chemicals, quicker design processes, and better machinery maintenance. Set habits and opinions within these areas, which often can be difficult for humans to let go of, can be easily set aside by artificial intelligence, whose innovativeness can lead to meaningful improvements and stronger efficiencies. Cameras and other sensors can be used to identify products and manufacturing components, and the collected data points subsequently employed by the software to e.g. locate and remove defective products or change designs toward preservation of input resources.

Intelligent software already exists in a long line of industries in which it mostly just needs to be used in more circular contexts. The textile industry, however, still has much unexplored potential vis-à-vis AI, needing companies to take on a different mindset and become more willing to try new things. AI doubtless has the potential to alleviate many of the textile industry’s shortcomings. All we need to do to realize it is to cooperate — with our computers as well as our stakeholders.

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