Australia to set a world-first standard for composting textiles

Australia has a 227,000 tonne a year fashion waste problem, but thanks to a lingerie designer’s campaign, some of it could soon rot productively

Lucianne Tonti and Alyx Gorman
Guardian
Mar 21, 2023

Excerpt:

For the last 18 months, Stephanie Devine of the Very Good Bra has worked with sustainability experts, academics and industry to create a proposal for Standards Australia: a technical specification for compostable textiles.

On 21 March, after a period of public consultation, the proposal was accepted by Standards Australia’s production management group.

Adam Stingemore, from Standards Australia, said: “While there are global standards for compostability, we are not aware of any specifically for compostable textiles, so we believe this to be a world first.”

Covering everything from the size of allen keys to the installation of electrical wiring to food safety to country currency codes, standards are the collectively accepted rules, specifications and procedures that ensure things work the way they are supposed to. They can be set at a state, national or international level.

Brooke Summers, of Cotton Australia, who supported Devine’s campaign said a textile composting standard “means a lot to us”.

“The scalability of it is just phenomenal,” Summers said. Cotton Australia, the peak body representing Australian cotton farmers, was separately working on projects that repurpose cotton clothing in agriculture. Australians send nearly 227,000 tonnes of textiles to landfill every year, but Summers said on a farm: “Two-and-a-half tonnes [of cotton waste] doesn’t go far at all.”

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