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Sustainability unwrapped a conversational podcast about responsibility, ethics, inequalities,

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climate change and other challenges of our times where science needs practise to think about awards and how to make our society more sustainable.

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One forecast at a time. Hi, everyone.

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We welcome our listeners to another podcast at Of Sustainability and Growth.

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And in this episode, we will talk about the textile reuse and recycling.

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I'm the host of this episode and I'm from Hong Kong School of Economics, where I'm doing research about supply chain and sustainability.

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And our guest today is important A.M. from a non-profit organisation next year, located in a beautiful Finnish city of town,

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better and next military style involved in collection and sizing of U.S. textiles.

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High, ample. It's so great to have you here. Hi, Anna.

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It's really nice to be here. Thank you. It's a lot of things happening in Finland right now for textile reuse and recycling.

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And I guess our listeners have heard on my part about the nationwide textile collection system coming up in Finland.

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I think the goal is to have it by 2020 three.

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Right? Somehow, very soon. Yeah, it's one and a half years from now already.

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Yeah, exactly. So what I know that kind of thing.

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Most of your textiles in Finland end up in the next household waste or rather collected by the charity organisations,

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for example, with FEMA or Red Cross. So it might be something like 80 versus 20 percent.

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So on top of your experience, could you tell us a bit more what's cooking in this area right now?

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So what's in the nationwide collection of You Six about to bring to our life?

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Of course, the nationwide textile collection is it comes from the European Union and it starts EU wide in 2025.

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But Finland is starting it two years earlier because we want to be frontrunners and to achieve the national collection,

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we need to develop a network of textile collectors that collect used textiles from all over Finland.

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Also, we need to build a textile factory to recycle, be used next to us,

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and also we need to find ways to utilise the used textiles, especially those that are not in good enough condition to be sold.

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And we for that, we need companies that develop and manufacture new products out of recycled textile fibres that will be produced by the factory.

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And the textile factory is built in Toriko and it is supposed to handle all of.

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Inlands, recyclability used textiles and the textiles are collected and sorted locally, and then they are transported to Toriko for recycling.

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The factory will break the clothes apart in order to recover the textile fibres from those used textiles.

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Mm hmm. I see. And so next duty is actually a part of this network of factories, right?

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Yeah, we are. We have been a part of the Guelaguetza project that has for a long time studied textile use, textiles and textile recycling.

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And now for the duration of the year 2021, we are part of the pilot phase of the national collection.

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So we are already receiving used textiles for the recycling pilot and we are sorting them by textile material.

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So, yeah, we are very, very much in the midst of this. Yeah, that sounds exciting.

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And now when you talking a lot about reuse and then also recycling,

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I thought about it's maybe important to understand the difference between those two terms.

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It might be sound like back to basics that we have to define this terminology.

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But I think it's really important at the end of our discussion,

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when we talk more about collection purposes and the different conditions of use textiles.

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And from my experience, I work a lot with these terms in terms of my research work and being absolutely honest here.

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Before I joined the research forces,

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I thought that dividing the trash between different household collection bins is something that recycling truly is,

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and that now at this point of time, it's quite familiar to me.

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What is the use of what is recycling?

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However, I do come across the situations and the various information sources where reusable and recyclable, those two words are used interchangeably.

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Could you please clarify which processes stand behind the textile to use from your experience?

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And then also, where does the recycling for textiles actually begin?

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Yeah, that is very necessary because I also think I don't know any regular person outside of this textile use,

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textile industry or field that uses recycling in its specific meaning.

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It has a different meaning in everyday language. So we need to talk about that.

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Yeah. So the everyday meeting is usually it has everything.

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It is generally everything that has to do with putting the stuff that you have

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that you don't need basically anywhere else besides your trash can at home.

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But the specific meaning that we are talking about here and when we talk about recycling and the national collection,

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it actually means recovering the material and using it as a raw material for the new product.

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So with clothes and textiles, this means, for example, that you have your old pair of jeans and then the jeans are broken down to material level.

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And then the material, usually the cotton is recovered from the jeans, the jeans are broken apart,

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and then you take the cotton and then you produce a new recycled textile fibre out of that cotton.

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And yeah. So basically it's utilised as a raw material for the new product.

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I see. Yeah. And they are it requires like a factory process to do that.

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But Reuse is using an item of clothing in its original intended purpose.

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So if we take the pair of jeans as an example again, then it's reusing the jeans as jeans.

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You wear them on your own, you as trousers.

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That's how we use.

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So that's that doesn't require a factory process, you can just give them to your friend, for example, or sell them at a flea market.

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That's a reuse. And what this has to do with national collection, the national collection focuses precisely on recycling so that there is,

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for example, an existing network of actors who you can donate your clothes for reuse.

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They have to be in prime condition.

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But for recycling, it's far clothes that are in less than prime condition and maybe cannot be sold as they are right now.

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So it's a way of finding finding ways to utilise the old old, maybe a little bit worn, worn down clothes and textiles.

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I see when we speak about reuse and recycling and also now it's such a hot subject about national collection system,

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I have a personal impression or the feeling that reuse is kind of less emphasised nowadays,

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while recycling has been always such a sexy subject in a way.

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But we need to keep in mind that there is importance of waste prevention strategies.

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So it sounds maybe sounds funny, but in those ways like applying those waste prevention strategies,

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we will we will have less things to recycle at the end of the day.

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And here I have actually rather personal question to you.

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I understand the motivation behind establishing a collection of textile or textile to use and recycling to be more sustainable,

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environmentally friendly. But why did you personally become interested in two years?

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Yeah, it's a it's a funny, funny old story.

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Um, originally, I'm a social science student and I graduated from social sciences as a master with a master's degree,

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um, with with a leaning towards gender studies and nationalism.

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So very different from recycled textiles. And after graduation, I was I was thinking about DNA.

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I was applying for part time work that has nothing to do with academia.

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And I couldn't get the part time work for a while.

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And my writing for PhD left behind. So the local employment services at the sent me to next year for a work trial,

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which is customary to help with career planning and to basically to do something that you are not just sitting at your home.

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So that's how I ended up in next year originally. And that's next.

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That's what next year also does, that we offer opportunities for people who have been looking for work for a long time and they receive instructions,

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instructions for doing the work. So we learn like basic work skills and also, uh,

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career planning and like aiding Ading with finding employment or thinking about your next career plan.

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And yeah, when I worked there for a while, I thought, OK, this is really great.

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It's a really great combination of environmental good and social good.

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And I was offered the opportunity to work at Next Daehlie as an instructor and that meant

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that the PhD went to my desk desk drawer and now my first option is to work at next year.

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And I've been working here for three years already and my current status at Nextel is that I'm an instructor and I direct people who have,

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for example, they might never have had a job or that they don't have a complete degree.

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And from day to day, we saw textile. Send them and we work with vintage clothes and we offer them also carry a planning and for example,

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we help them finish their studies if they have unfinished studies.

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I'm also working at a project called Functional Learning Environments of Circular Economy.

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So we are finding when we move to what circular economy we are finding jobs and also try to create jobs and

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identify places that there are jobs within the circular economy that do not require such like a university degree,

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like we try to find where are the possible future future employment places for free, for example, people with vocational degrees.

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I'm also the head of next State Department and I'm responsible for half of next Delice store that we have.

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Also a thumping. We have a store beside salting and yeah, I'm really excited about my work.

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That sounds exciting. And it's so interesting that Next Daehlie has both such a strong social aspect along with environmental purpose in your work.

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So to me, it sounds as you are standing on the all sustainability pillars in the way social, environmental and economic, hopefully.

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So you are now working on the and leading the project about six outsourcing, as I understood from your background.

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And I think I'd like to ask more questions about connexion and starting practises.

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Also, I am a logistician myself, so that's the topics that I'm curious the most and I hope our listeners are as well.

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So to me, it seems that textile collection and sorting process are quite complicated.

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And from my experience of studying and working with charity collectors,

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I heard that textiles often are prone to humidity and Wolke into collection containers, and those things can prevent reuse and recycling.

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And also, I know that the songwriting process is very intensive.

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So people have to look at manually and check every single item that they get into their sorting process.

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So from your experience, what makes textiles so special to handle?

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Or maybe if I better phrase this question, how textiles are different from other waste types?

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Yeah, textiles are very delicate, as you described.

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You have to be very careful with them because one one moulded textile, I know to a textile can ruin the whole batch.

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But the main thing that separates textiles from other West types,

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I think that the main difference is that there are immediate use and market value in textile waste in quotation marks.

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So. You can open a bag of you use Dexters, and we hope it's always washed and cleaned when it's brought to us,

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but you can open it and then you can grab an item of clothing from there.

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And if it's good in good condition, clean, fashionable, you can just put it on a coat hanger, attach a price tag and sell it.

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And you can sell it with five euros, 10 euros, maybe even 50 euros.

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So it's difficult to imagine the same sort of process with plastic or aluminium cans that, yeah,

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you can just take them and put them on a store just just like they arrive and then sell them for good money.

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So I think that's that's a big difference.

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I can't imagine doing that, for example, with the old, I don't know, yoghurt carton folks that have tried to sell that.

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That's not going to work. Exactly. So the market value and indeed needed is something that textile waste is about.

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So it seems like the collection is an important step.

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But you're also emphasise that the content that the clothing that's, for example, consumers bring should be clean and you hope that that is so.

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It is important that what kind of content consumers bring to the collection container or the collection point.

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And I wonder if there are any ways we can influence consumer sorting practises or maybe

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at least we can direct them towards the right collection amongst all available options.

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And it seems like there are so many of them. So charity privates and also now public collectors.

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Mm hmm. That is a key question also for the listeners, but also for us, all of us people working with youth textiles at the moment.

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The question then, yeah, the local waste management companies will be responsible for organising the national collection.

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And it's one and a half year away. And a lot a lot is still uncertain.

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So I try to talk about. What what I know and from what I've heard and what I know from my experience,

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that what we all want to do is to make it as easy as possible for the consumer and for the households to donate.

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TechStars But there will be varying conditions in different parts of Finland, such as population density and different networks of local actors.

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For example, in my small hometown in eastern Finland, there is, as far as I know,

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there is not a place to donate, even even textiles in that are in good condition.

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And yeah, so how the national collection will be done it I think the local practises will vary.

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So they try to make use of the local actors and try to take into account the local specialists.

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If it is something we I think we do know it's good that we try to collect stuff that is for recycling, for recycling.

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So the stuff that it's that is in prime condition.

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That could be sold or reused. We are not so sure about that yet, but is it the same place?

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Is it like a one stop shop or is it recommended that you donate it to some existing actis that collect the reusable TechStars already?

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And we are not sure how it will look. So it's possible that the collection where you donate it for the national collection, is it indoors or outdoors?

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Um, is it, for example, located at malls or is it maybe at some yards like like your by your waist, for example.

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Um, likely it will be in some public places, um, for example,

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near malls or near like market squares in such in a similar fashion that plastic collection is organised

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that then that there will be container container boxes where you can donate the used textiles and.

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Yeah, there are good sites and bad side to that's the outdoors collection boxes are sensitive to humidity,

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but they can be closer, closer, and that can be more of them. So it's it's a good thing.

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Um. There's kind of a Trade-Off between accessibility and then also can be kind of connexion safety of the material inside that.

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Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, smart people are trying to find the best possible solution.

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Yeah. And yeah. Also what what the consumers have to how I would direct the consumers at this point is.

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Follow your local waste management company and their information.

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They are the principal actor here, so that's a that's always a good thing to do from this point on.

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But also remember to prioritise reuse.

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So if you have clothes that are good to be sold, please try to sell them first and then only after that.

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Donate for the national collection and please remember to wash wash the used clothes that you are donating and make sure they are properly dried.

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And also stuff that has a high hygiene risk such as underwear will not be suitable for the national collection.

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Um. Yeah, and also. I've seen that the next day at my place of employment that we are this kind of one

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stop shop where you can donate like from your reuseable to recyclable text us.

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And we see that there there is always some textiles that are not in good enough condition.

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And it's it is really important that they are because we cannot be sure how much in the same bag is contaminated, even if there is one,

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one or two bad items of clothing, because stuff like mould can be really hazardous to clothes that's spread around.

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Yeah, that's true, but. Well, yeah, that's about it. Those are the most important instructions I can think of.

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That's great. So I know when you were talking, I was thinking about some examples and then please correct me if I'm wrong.

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So if let's say I have absolutely dirty piece of clothing, having some I know oil or some really stains that can be spread over other textiles.

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So I would rather put that to mixed waste because I know it will be burned for energy and burning waste is also sort of a way of recovering.

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Right. So those absolutely dirty and non recyclable items, they go to waste in our household.

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Is that true? Yes, that is true.

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If it's like completely dirty, if this stains like blood stains or urine stains,

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stuff like that, or it's absolutely dirty and disgusting that an item of clothing.

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Yes. That mixed waste is the best place, best place to put it.

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Your regular old trash can at home because, yeah,

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it's more most economical and ecological to burn it because it would be really

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difficult to recover the material from there because there is high hygiene risk.

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So definitely for some items it's best to put it in the trash.

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Exactly. Exactly. So then I'm thinking about those items that are, for example,

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having some worn out spots or for example, they are simply not good enough for being reused.

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So there are some parts that are completely missing. And you know that, for example, you wouldn't be wear them again.

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And then most likely some other person also wouldn't be happy about having that item in their wardrobe if we talk about clothing.

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So this is the right kind of item for national collection of plastic stuff.

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That's something that they want to have because they will recycle that. Is that correct?

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Yeah, exactly. It's kind of preferably has like some small faults.

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It kind of homes, but it has to be washed and clean and not a high hygiene risk.

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So, yeah, that sounds like the correct type of product. OK, that's good.

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So I think I start to understand the logic applied behind that.

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And then last category is the ones they're usable textiles like the precious ones, the ones you can get the most value out from.

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I guess if you sell them as they are, if they go to, for example, charity stores or vintage selection of next Sealy.

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And they are basically, I guess the rule of thumb would be that you would be happy to wear them again yourself,

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like maybe the style would work still for you. And yeah.

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Or for example, you would be able to sell them one gift to a friend and not being ashamed of doing that.

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Yeah. So but actually selling the clothing through the store, for example, Facebook or giving it to a friend,

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it sounds to me like most common ways to do that is to use of clothing.

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And I know that next year you have such advanced reuse practises.

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So maybe could you share with us a bit more about how do you do reuse at next to as professionals?

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Yeah, with pleasure. Yeah. So the next really, we have quite a wide variety of possibilities for reuse.

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So even if you're even when you're donating for reuse,

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it might be good to check the website of the actor you are donating to to check out what they receive and what they don't receive.

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I think we at next are a little bit special in what we can receive for reuse as well.

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So our main thing is reusing and reusing it locally.

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So it's important to us that the benefits of the donated clothes are felt in the same communities and.

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Yeah, and also because of ecological reasons that you don't have to transport the used textiles all over and.

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All textile Ortiz at Nextel go through every item that's donated and then check whether it meets

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the criteria for reuse or recycling or whether the only possible alternative is actually burning.

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It does energy waste, which happens also.

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Um, but yeah, we have the regular reuse with regular clothes that you donate that are in prime condition, that are modern and fashionable.

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We we are in partnership with three recycling centres and we direct our sellable modern Second-Hand clothes there to be sold.

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But then this is the special part. We have a vintage selection at our own store.

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It's basically clothes that are produced in the 2000s or earlier, and we also sell clothes that have some faults in them.

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They can have small holes or even bigger holes or some stains. We have clothes and textiles that.

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Yeah, they are faulty, but we still sell them at a price, it's a lower price, but we still are able and willing to sell them,

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which is fantastic that the old clothes with and the material is often also very good.

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Uh, it's really nice that we can also find a new home for them with people who are skilled at repairing them.

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And we have a very skilled customer base who can do that and who are willing to buy them and who are into vintage.

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So it's a really, really fun and privileged position to be in as next year.

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Also, we are selling second hand ya's fabrics and handicraft supplies and sewing machines.

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And as far as I know, that's unique in Finland, uh, having a second hand store for those items, at least on our scale.

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Also, we have tailor raised collections for entrepreneurs. So if an entrepreneur can't find something at our store,

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they can contact us and they can request for a specific types of items to be collected for them specially.

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And then we negotiate the price. And then it's possible to for entrepreneurs to get exactly what they want for for example,

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for some new idea, for a new circular economy product that they decide to produce.

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So it's a it's a good service.

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I don't know, I haven't heard of similar service either elsewhere, but it may exist maybe also those are the things we get money out of.

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But we also do charity and we want to give back because people donate their tax dollars to us.

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We want also to donate them onwards and have have the possibility to do good things around us.

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So we also have the similar types of tailor raised collections for charities.

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So also charities and associations can contact us.

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And for general purposes, they can also request that we collect something for them specifically and that's usually for free.

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For example, we have collected items of clothing for mother and child homes,

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day centre for people struggling with addictions, animal shelters, theatre productions, etc., etc.

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And we also have a deal with primary schools in Tampa that they can pick up free materials for their textile lessons at schools.

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And we have similar sort of deal with the textile industry.

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Students at studying at Vocational Institute try to get done.

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Thumper uh, we also send some materials to charity abroad.

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We have like we give hand to hand with, you know,

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with the hand to hand the principal to some charity workers that donate them to people, less privileged people in Baltic countries.

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We just sent some material to Gambia and we also work with it to send some materials abroad.

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But we try to emphasise the local reuse more and more and we try to.

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We try to achieve that all of our material stays within the borders of Finland during the year 2022 and from there onwards, I think.

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Well, firstly, it's impressive. It's impressive that you do so many different use practises with the daily and you listed so many of them.

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So it is really an extensive portfolio. And I like your idea about locality and being a domestically used actor, because as a logistician,

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I do believe that if we reduce the emissions and we prevent our textiles from travelling somewhere abroad,

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even though they would be seeking for another life, we still can become more sustainable if we do that domestically and locally.

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And now when you were describing all different use purposes that you have for the next meeting,

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I was kind of getting back to our discussion about sourcing practises.

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So it seems like all these diverse use purposes require skilled workforce that actually

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can professionally sourced textiles according to criteria for different purposes.

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And I think other fields that are now heavily into recycling,

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they might experience similar issues around workforce for recycling and various tasks that are linked to weatherization of waste.

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So what do you think? What types of specialists will be needed at different phases and where will it be possible to get that education?

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And we can take Finland as an example maybe. Yeah.

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When the society society will change, hopefully a lot and then we will need new kinds of expertise.

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And yeah, when we move closer to what circular economy, we will require personnel with various areas of expertise,

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I'm sure we will need engineers, manufacturers, mechanics, marketing people to develop their circular economy expertise.

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But what I know most about is the collection phase because I'm working with that daily.

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And that also requires a specific set of skills and it requires training, in my opinion.

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And currently, in most cases,

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the sorting of used TechStars is not a paid full time profession and it doesn't have relevant education or it's not available in Finland.

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But we wish we wish we had next on both and me personally, we wish it will become a full time profession with with maybe study programmes.

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And I am happy to say that next year amongst one of the one or two others in Finland have created a course as part of textile and fashion industries,

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studies about sorting recyclable quotation marks, recycled textiles.

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Um, and it's part of the project that was mentioned, the functional learning environment environments of circular economy.

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And it's a 12 week course that you can do here at next Daehlie and you get the credits at the Vocational Institute to try to get better.

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And the course includes practical sorting. You learn different material fibres by hand.

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You do the actual salting work. And also there are theoretical lessons every week, for example, about which clothes are sellable.

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How do you identify things such as textile pests?

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Um, what are the possible advantages and disadvantages of certain textile materials about vintage?

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What vintage can be sold and in what condition and other possibilities for reuse, for example,

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how to handle the tailoring collections, special collections and yeah, various topics.

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And we hope that this this along with the other few courses that exist,

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we really hope this will form a basis for a nationwide vocational course for textile sorting.

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I think we need that because that will be the nationwide collection.

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So we need people who have had the training and who do the sorting all over Finland,

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uh, at least the pre sorting phase locally in various parts of Finland.

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And also eventually I hope there will be a degree of, for example, textile sorting and logistics or something like that.

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I, I will hope that this will happen. And I will I will hope that next.

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He has also a real role in that because I would be really excited to work with that.

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I also would like to have that because then I could come up with a teaching and then also to join that in my research would be to actually apply.

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Over there. So that's fantastic that there's already opportunity and I didn't know about this course,

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so it makes me feel very positive that education is kind of the key.

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So I feel like with that education and educating people so that we can build a

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successful future and actually achieve circular economy because we will get people,

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knowledgeable people, experts in reuse and recycling, but also for textile industry in general.

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In Finland, I have an impression that people are very engaged with sustainable lifestyle.

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At some point. I feel like now nowadays these are the kind of stone of the Finnish lifestyle.

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So and they know a lot for basic consumer,

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for basic textile consumer changes that we discussed right now will demand quite a lot of skill for people to work with textile collection.

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But also I'm thinking about the consumers and the consumer perspective.

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It feels like it will increase the demand,

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like what's demanded from them as textile consumers at the point when dispose their clothing or out of household textiles.

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And now, since they listened through the entire episodes and they get so many insights,

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I want them to leave this episode with kind of main takeaways from our discussion.

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As for textiles, textiles, consumers, so the question that we maybe would like to answer is this takeaways would be how can we help them not to

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lose themselves in this upcoming changes related to textile collection and how to be a sustainable consumer?

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OK, so top tips that ductility how to survive the national collection.

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Exactly. OK, first of all, I think it all starts from buying less and producing less waste, so.

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Think about what you buy, buy less, buy ecological, buy ethical, buy second hand, take care.

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Remember to enjoy your clothes and repair them if need be.

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Um, and please, please, please donate clothes that are washed.

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Wash your clothes first and follow the instructions of the place you are donating them to check their website.

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It's their job to make their instructions clear and simple. Hopefully they also will be that.

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So follow the instructions. They're also to keep up to date, follow your local waste waste management companies information about this.

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Uh, they should be your primary source of information in your local area.

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And it might be useful to remember from this episode the difference between recycling and reuse and based on that,

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to handle your use, text us accordingly.

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So at first, think about reuse, think that is there a place you can donate for reuse and then check out the possibilities for recycling,

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for the clothes that are not in prime condition, that are to be sold?

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We will see whether it will be like a one stop shop where you can donate all of them.

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But it's it's still good whether it will be that it's still good to know the difference.

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Also, you might want to check us out next at Social Media.

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We are on Instagram, Facebook and Tic-Tac. That's right.

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I love your vintage selection, so it's good to follow. Yeah, I am.

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I would like to sign in and everything you just said and maybe just for myself.

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I would also add to the first point that love your clothing. So for me, it has changed a lot of my consumption.

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A lot of my consumption habits.

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When I started actually to really fall in love with what I'm buying from clothing stores, repairing that cleaning, taking care of that,

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cleaning it carefully,

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and then also kind of sharing that love by donating clean pieces that I can't or I don't want to wear myself to charity organisations.

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And yes, so now I think we are reaching the end of our episodes.

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And thank you very much for being here today,

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making it possible to have such an interesting discussion about six years and about what's coming up, the national collection of textiles.

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So coming back to our listeners, we really hope you enjoyed today's episode and it was insightful for you.

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We are looking forward to your feedback as well on everything that we have shared with you here today.

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And so with you today, we had input from SEXILY and the Bureau from Hopkins School of Economics.

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Thank you very much for your time.