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Circularity
0+ billion
clothing items are produced every year.
That’s a lot of stuff.
And even though we’re throwing away
0M
tons
tons
of textiles each year,
0M
tons
tons
of new fiber is produced.
Not to mention:
Basically, we’re using too many (often limited) resources and turning them into waste.
Not to mention:
Basically, we’re using too many
(often limited) resources and
turning them into waste.
(often limited) resources and
turning them into waste.
We’ve been into circularity since before it was
really a thing. It’s a big part of Ref – from our
business model, to our love for vintage and
deadstock, to recycling things we make.
But even as a brand founded on
sustainability, there’s a lot more we
can do to incorporate circularity into
who we are, and everything we make.
really a thing. It’s a big part of Ref – from our
business model, to our love for vintage and
deadstock, to recycling things we make.
But even as a brand founded on
sustainability, there’s a lot more we
can do to incorporate circularity into
who we are, and everything we make.
So, we’re doing it. We believe the future of
fashion is circular, and making something new
shouldn’t have to mean using virgin materials.
We know goal-setting isn’t a substitute for
action, but it’s a damn good place to start. By
setting what we hope are clear definitions and
an ambitious timeline, we’re making a
concrete roadmap of how we plan to get
there, so you can all help hold us accountable.
fashion is circular, and making something new
shouldn’t have to mean using virgin materials.
We know goal-setting isn’t a substitute for
action, but it’s a damn good place to start. By
setting what we hope are clear definitions and
an ambitious timeline, we’re making a
concrete roadmap of how we plan to get
there, so you can all help hold us accountable.
We’ve been into circularity since before it was really a thing. It’s a big part of Ref – from our business model, to our love for vintage and deadstock, to recycling things we make.
But even as a brand founded on sustainability, there’s a lot more we can do to incorporate circularity into who we are, and everything we make.
So, we’re doing it. We believe the future of fashion is circular, and making something new shouldn’t have to mean using virgin materials.
So, we’re doing it. We believe the future of fashion is circular, and making something new shouldn’t have to mean using virgin materials.
We know goal-setting isn’t a substitute for action, but it’s a damn good place to start. By setting what we hope are clear definitions and an ambitious timeline, we’re making a concrete roadmap of how we plan to get there, so you can all help hold us accountable.
Our plan
Commitment
Our goal is to be
Circular by
2023
And we’re aligning that with Ellen MacArthur
Foundation’s definition of a circular economy
and its three guiding principles:
1
Eliminate Waste
and pollution
Plan, design, and produce smarter to create lessand pollution
waste in the first place.
Design out waste at every stage of production.
Keep using materials that are safe for people and
the planet, and don’t use ones that aren’t.
2
Circulate Products
and materials
Keep our stuff around for a long time.
and materials
Collect textile waste every step of
the way, and turn it into new
materials.
Make cool things out of those
recycled materials.
3
Regenerate Nature
Keep working in a way that's Climate Positive.
Use renewable and regenerative practices for
necessary virgin materials so they have a net
positive impact on the planet.
Our goal is to be
Circular by
2023
And we’re aligning that with Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of a circular economy and its three guiding principles:
Ultimately, we want to
make products that:
To start, we’ll update our Better Materials and sourcing roadmaps to prioritize vintage, deadstock, recycled, and next-gen materials. Because of natural processes like degradation, entropy, and dissipation, our target isn’t 0% virgin. But we’ll get as close as possible, and balance the rest with rapidly renewable and regenerative fibers. Currently, a little more than 70%+ of our materials are recycled, regenerative, or renewable. And we’ll shift another 10% of our sourcing to this category each year to get as close to losing our virginity as we can by 2025.
“Recyclable” here refers to RefRecycling, our post-consumer take-back solution, where we process our products to be textile-to-textile recycled or upcycled. And for the stuff that’s not able to be kept in the direct fashion system, we’re exploring compostability and other ways to return our stuff back to a biological cycle. By 2030, we’ll have a recycling solution for everything we make.
To start, we'll update our Better Materials and sourcing roadmaps to prioritize vintage, deadstock, recycled, and next-gen materials. Because of natural processes like degradation, entropy, dissipation, our target isn’t 0% virgin. But we’ll get as close as possible, and balance the rest with rapidly renewable and regenerative fibers. Currently, a little more than 70%+ of our materials are recycled, regenerative, or renewable. And we’ll shift another 10% of our sourcing to this category each year to get as close to losing our virginity as we can by 2025.
“Recyclable” here refers to Ref Recycling, our post-consumer take-back solution, where we process our products to be textile-to-textile recycled or upcycled. And for the stuff that’s not able to be kept in the direct fashion system, we’re exploring compostability and other ways to return our stuff back to a biological cycle. By 2030, we’ll have a recycling solution for everything we make.
For both goals, we’re focusing our efforts on the primary fabrics and materials (AKA fabrics used in the main garment or product). We’ll continue to minimize the use of trims and other components, and make sure our products are designed for circularity and can be disassembled as part of the recycling process. We'll also check out sourcing recycled/recyclable trims and threads as a second priority.
Our plan
Roadmap
At the highest level, here’s how Ref, our customers,
and the industry will need to work together to go circular:
and the industry will need to work together to go circular:
For our clothes to stick around, they need to be made from durable, quality, non-toxic, and recyclable materials. We also need to source as many recycled, next generation, and regenerative fibers as we can.
That’s on us.
Consumers need to buy less and buy better. We’re counting on them to care for our clothes responsibly and say bye wisely: AKA repairing, reselling, or recycling.
That’s on our customer.
(With some help from us)
We’re committed to a circular future, but to make it happen, we need partners, infrastructure, reporting, and probably some regulation.
This takes the whole industry.
(But don’t worry, we’ll help)
For our clothes to stick around, they need to be made from durable, quality, non-toxic, and recyclable materials. We also need to source as many recycled, next generation, and regenerative fibers as we can.
That’s on us.
Consumers need to buy less and buy better. We’re counting on them to care for our clothes responsibly and say bye wisely: AKA repairing, reselling, or recycling.
That’s on our customer.
(With some help from us)
We’re committed to a circular future, but to make it happen, we need partners, infrastructure, reporting, and probably some regulation.
This takes the whole industry.
(But don’t worry, we’ll help)
Here are the main things we’re going to do to make this happen:
1
Eliminate waste
and pollution
and pollution
We’ll continue to invest in and expand smart merchandising, using tools like digital sampling, preorder, and waitlist to make sure we aren’t overproducing. This way, we’ll be able to make more products and grow as a company, but do so responsibly.
We’ll continue to work with our suppliers to find cross-industry solutions to capture post-industrial textile waste in our supply chain. Even the little things matter, so we’ll create standards to check for things like greater marker efficiency. And we’ll keep testing ways to motivate our suppliers on the path to zero waste, with the hope that all strategic suppliers have a recycling solution in place by 2030.
Starting in 2025, each of our products will have at least one circular attribute (e.g. designed from recycled materials or for durability, recycling). We're starting this year by developing guidelines to make this happen with our design and product teams. That way, we can prioritize circularity from the start without sacrificing the things about Ref you love.
Currently, 85%+ of our products are processed in facilities with a clean chemistry certification like OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 or bluesign®. We’ll continue to grow our RSL and Clean Chemistry programs, including supporting suppliers transitioning to cleaner processing. We’ll also maintain our commitment to limit the use of synthetic fibers, and avoid potential microplastic pollution.
We already have 100% recycled polybags and paper mailers, but we’re not stopping there. We’re gonna take a closer look at our operations to see where we can eliminate single-use plastic and packaging in general, as well as expand our direct packaging recycling programs.
We’ll design more things that don’t require a fancy dry cleaner. And we’ll help out customers with care resources to make sure their Ref stuff lasts as long as it can. We’ll continue to expand on repair and alteration pilots from 2022, and consider how we can make them a first step for our customers before donation or recycling. Because stuff this cute should be in your closet for as long as possible.
2
Circulate products
and materials
There’s nothing more sustainable than using stuff that already exists. So, we’ll continue to grow our resale partnerships and explore even more ways to promote upcycling, one-of-a-kind vintage sourcing, and resale so that it represents at least 10% or more of our business volume by 2030.
It’s one thing to get our clothes back, but it’s another to actually get those materials back into the fashion system. We think building a multi-brand, scaled solution is the way–so we’ll continue to develop our RefRecycling partnership with SuperCircle, expanding the network of recyclers and accepting more fiber types as we go. We’ll look to build at least two regionalized networks for North America and Europe. If there are certain fibers and fabric types that still can’t be recycled, we’ll stop sourcing them by 2030 and focus on more circular-ready alternatives.
If we want Ref stuff to pass through as many hands, closets, and partners as it can from first purchase, to resale, to recycling, we need to make sure we have an efficient way to track it. That means making key info (e.g. product details for resale or fiber content for recycling) more accurate and accessible. So we’ll be focused on testing digital labels and product passports and expanding our traceability efforts.
95%+ of our sourcing is in low-impact fibers, but we need to do more to shift away from virgin fibers. We’ll continue to invest in and experiment with new recycling technologies and fibers. We’ll also expand these preferred materials and purchasing standards to the other parts of our business, especially our retail stores. Based on where we are today, here is what we expect the sourcing focuses to be.
3
Regenerate
nature
We currently source around 5% regeneratively grown fibers. While we love recycled stuff, we know that for things like performance and quality, we still need some virgin materials. So we'll focus on sourcing the best ones around, supporting farm-level investments in regenerative practices while expanding our sourcing of high-quality raw materials. Multitasking.
We need to make sure we’re taking data-informed steps and can account for the impact reductions in our greenhouse gas inventory and other key reporting. This means waving a big red flag if we find some fibers or product categories have a potential net negative impact. We’ll need to stay connected to the wider industry movement on this, but also invest directly in better impact analysis and life cycle assessments for recycled fibers and alternative business models.
A commitment like this sounds great, but we want to be accountable to actually
doing it. So we’re using Circulytics, a company-level circularity measurement tool.
We will work with Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s team on assessing our baseline
and scorecard in 2023 and make our scorecard publicly available.
doing it. So we’re using Circulytics, a company-level circularity measurement tool.
We will work with Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s team on assessing our baseline
and scorecard in 2023 and make our scorecard publicly available.
We'll also share our progress in our quarterly Sustainability
Reports and measure how we're doing by the percentage of:
Reports and measure how we're doing by the percentage of:
Garments sold vs
garments produced
garments produced
Garments designed for a
circularity attribute
circularity attribute
Garments reused–through
resale, vintage, or rental
resale, vintage, or rental
Garments that are recyclable, recycled,
regenerative, or renewable
regenerative, or renewable
Deadstock, recycled, or next-gen materials
used instead of virgin fibers
used instead of virgin fibers
Follow along
Challenges
We’re committing to going circular, while knowing that there are real
challenges we can’t control that may impact our ability to get there by
2030. There are also some important tradeoffs to consider.
challenges we can’t control that may impact our ability to get there by
2030. There are also some important tradeoffs to consider.
For instance,
we know that:
we know that:
For instance, we know that:
We know that recycling isn’t the only answer, and we’re super inspired by progress being made in bio-based and rapidly renewable solutions. So we’re not ruling anything out. As more and better information becomes available, we’ll stay flexible and pivot to the best option for each specific fiber and the transition to circularity as a whole.
A lot of this work assumes some major strides in technological innovation and scale. Plus, industry-wide regulation, advances in Extended Product Responsibility, and other concepts that move this idea into the mainstream. Basically, a bunch of stuff we can’t make happen, but can definitely influence. We’lll continue to do that, advocating and investing in big changes in both policy and innovation. And showing everyone how it’s done.
2030 is right around the corner, but we like a challenge. We know that we’ll probably
have surprises and misses along the way, and we’re okay with that. We will own up to
them in places like our Sustainability Report. We’ll also update this roadmap as we figure
out how to go circular, to help anyone else who wants to do this.
have surprises and misses along the way, and we’re okay with that. We will own up to
them in places like our Sustainability Report. We’ll also update this roadmap as we figure
out how to go circular, to help anyone else who wants to do this.
Follow along
Sustainability strategy
At Ref, we take a holistic approach to sustainability. So, while this circularity commitment will become the focus for a lot of our efforts between now and 2030, our Climate Positive work and our Social Responsibility programs are still foundational to what we’re doing. Especially since so many of these issues intersect, so we shouldn’t and couldn’t set out to “be circular” without staying focused on these other impacts. We update our Sustainability Framework and strategy overview every year, so you can stay in the know on all our commitments.
Circularity goes beyond the linear model of take-make-dispose to create an economy that aims to restore itself. It focuses on three principles: design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. Not not our favorite word right now.
Any raw material that was cultivated or created for our product and hasn’t been used before. AKA new, first-generation, non-recycled.
Clothing is considered recyclable if it can be reused or broken down into its component parts or materials and put back into a manufacturing process.
The process of breaking down clothes back into a functional fiber so they can be turned into new textiles with as few virgin materials as possible.
Something that used to be something else. There are two main types of recycled materials–pre- & post-consumer recycled. Pre-consumer recycles waste that was created during the manufacturing process. Post-consumer recycles something that has previously been used by a customer–like your old pair of jeans.
Upcycling is a type of recycling that transforms waste into new, more valuable materials or products. A good example is recycling fabric scraps into new yarn–this turns waste into a new product, and keeps it circulating in the fashion system.
Downcycling is a form of recycling that turns waste into new materials, but usually at a lower value than it was before. For example, recycling fabric scraps into insulation.
Animal- and plant-based fibers that are produced using farming practices that help reverse climate change. There are lots of different ways to do this, but the focus is on increasing ecosystem health and combating global warming through carbon sequestration.
Natural fibers that are not finite, either plant- or animal-based (AKA non synthetic).
Fibers derived from plants that have a harvest cycle of 10 years or less, like eucalyptus trees and flax. As a bonus, they usually use way less water and chemicals to grow.
Innovative materials designed to replace animal-based or conventional materials. They include more sustainable versions of existing fibers, like synthetics and cellulose, plus new innovations in plant-based and lab-grown materials. We also use next-gen to talk about innovations happening outside of the finished product, like using recycled raw materials.
Natural processes, like composting and anaerobic digestion, that return nutrients to the soil and help regenerate nature. We’re into materials that can be part of this by biodegrading and safely returning back to the earth.
The processes that products and materials flow through in order to maintain their highest value at all times. Typically keeps stuff that’s not consumed during use–like metals, plastics, and wood–at the top of its game.
Giving something of value to eventually get something of value. When we talk about it here, we mean both direct financial support as well as strengthening business relationships.