Ep. 103: Roadmap to a circular future

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Ep. 103: Roadmap to a circular future

The Textile Innovation Podcast speaks to Danielle Kent, general manager industry transformation at Seamless.

Abigail Turner
Hello and welcome to Textile Innovation hosted by WTiN. My name is Abby, and I'm the Features Editor and your podcast host. Each month, we will be joined by a special guest to join me and my colleagues as we deep dive into what's new, what's interesting and what admissible innovations have hit the market recently, we cover everything on the podcast, from sustainability to startups and the latest research and development, plus we quiz the experts in the field about their products and ideas across the huge spectrum that is the textile industry. So no matter what your interest is. WTiN, have you covered, and we can connect you to everything you need to know right here from our central hub in the UK.

In this episode, I am joined by Danielle Kent, General Manager of industry transformation at Seamless. Seamless is Australia's clothing products stewardship scheme, which is on a mission to transform the way consumers, retailers and brands choose, enjoy and recycle clothing in Australia. The organization launched just three months ago, and in this episode, we discuss what it has already achieved and the vision for the road ahead. Hi, Danielle, thank you for joining me on the WTiN textile innovation podcast, please. Could you tell our listeners a bit about your background and your work within seamless

Danielle Kent
Well, thanks, Abby, and congratulations on hosting such an informative podcast for our industry. It's really exciting to be here today. So a bit about me. For the past three years, I was at the Australian fashion Council as director of the project consortium, leading the design and development of what was the national clothing product stewardship scheme, which we now know as seamless and as part of this process, I led the CO design of the scheme with industry and participated in meetings, workshops, consultation with recyclers and reuse experts and brands all talking about the issue of textile waste. So as a result, I have a really moderated and balanced understanding of the issues, challenges and opportunities across the entire clothing supply chain when it comes to Circular Economy. Earlier this year, I transitioned from the AFC to the General Manager, manager of industry transformation with seamless which I was thrilled to do, because obviously I want to continue the seamless vision into this next phase. But my background is in strategy and change management, so I have a really strong understanding of system transformation at a sectoral level, and I am passionate about the seamless purpose.

Abigail Turner
Amazing. Thank you. And could you tell me a bit more about seamless and what are its aims and what had been some company milestones?

Danielle Kent
Sure, if I take a step back to a circular clothing industry where brands take responsibility for the full life cycle of their products right at the point of design and production, while citizens understand how to enjoy clothing over and over again and recirculate them at the end of their usual life. So that is our ideal North Star, right? But we aren't there yet, and I don't know many other countries that are, and we have a long and bumpy road to get there. So what seamless does is aim to guide the industry transformation towards this circular economy that prioritizes social and environmental wellbeing together with economic prosperity. So that's very conceptual, but what practically is seamless. Seamless is funded by a four cent per garment levy paid by stewards who are the clothing brands who become members of the scheme. Then a central administered Fund invests in four priority areas. One circular design, so incentivizing clothing design so it's more durable, repairable, sustainable and recyclable. The second area is circular business models, so fostering new models of reuse, repair, rental and services that effectively prolong the life of clothing. The third area is closing the materials loop. So currently expanding the clothing collection and sorting practices in Australia for effective reuse and recycling, which is a massive piece of change work that has to happen. And then the fourth, really important area is citizen behavior change. So how do we encourage changed practices around clothing, acquisition, use, care and disposal? And we're really careful to use the word citizen rather than consumer, because it's not just about the point of consumption. It's how citizens walk around the world, and think about how they acquire clothes, and then when they have them, how do they look after them, and then how do they thoughtfully dispose of them at the end of life? So it's a really important part of it. Now, in terms of company milestones, we're proud to have just commenced our operations on one July this year. So we're only three months old, effectively. And at our commencement, we had 69 Australian brands standing alongside seamless as members, which is really strong commitment from industry to the vision of clothing. Circularity. Also at our commencement, we have the federal environmental minister, Tanya Plibersek, who has been extremely supportive of seamless, which has driven the momentum of our membership uptake and I suppose, on a more personal level, seamless recently won a national award for design excellence in fashion impact. So we're pleased that we have had such a strong start to our small but mighty organization.

Abigail Turner
Oh, that's brilliant. And going off this, can you tell me what seamless priorities are for the next 12 months and how they will help to drive the Australian clothing industry towards circularity by 2030

Danielle Kent
Yeah. So over the next 12 months, our strategic priorities are really clear. We need to build our member base to demonstrate that critical mass of industry that are working together in collaboration towards the shared goal and shared solutions number one. And then we also need to set a really strong baseline of data and metrics across our key priority area, so that provides an evidence base to inform our work in a targeted and meaningful way. And then third of our 3/3, of our strategic priorities is supply chain. Collaboration is really key in order to achieve circular outcomes. And the fourth priority is working with government on the pathway to regulation.

Abigail Turner
And what are the main challenges facing Australia's clothing industry, and how does seamless plan to overcome them?

Danielle Kent
So aside from the obvious challenges around so much textile waste is going to landfill, and that was really the origin of how seamless came about, is starting to intervene and rectify some really broken systems that are in our country. But I suppose bringing it back to a bit more of a recent challenge is recruiting industry into the scheme. Is about capturing the hearts and minds of the C suite. So sustainability has been seen as a cost or a very individual role of companies and brands for a long time now, and now we are finally talking about sustainability across entire business models to demonstrate that value that clothing circularity can have to areas like marketing, employee engagement, R and D innovation, treating products as a service, improving new profit, profit lines, and, of course, customer satisfaction and social license. So I think that this is like a really big challenge for seamless as it is, recruiting big volume brands who have been traditional in their business model and starting to convert that mindset around. So there's also an industry challenge when it comes to collaboration. We need to come together to accelerate our outcomes. Sharing and learning from each other is a new skill set for some of these brands that have been traditionally doing doing it on their own, but we are past single efforts, because we know that no brand will be able to achieve circularity on their own. There's no competitive advantage to working in a silo. It's a real yesterday mindset. So when I think about the main challenges for the industry, I really think about bringing the critical mass across to that way of thinking about the opportunity of cloning circularity and not just the cost.

Abigail Turner
Danielle, you recently spoke at Waste Expo Australia about the current state of product stewardship in the country. Please, could you explain what some of the key takeaways from that discussion were?

Danielle Kent
Yeah, I was really pleased to be at Waste Expo Australia. It's great to balance out conversations with our industry with broader discussions and experience. So product stewardship is not new to Australia. We have a lot to learn from other schemes that have been in place for many years, but for seamless we're the world's first circular stewardship scheme, and we've put design at the heart of the model, which has not traditionally been the way with other product stewardship schemes, but clothing really obviously lends itself to circularity more than a battery or a glass bottle. So when I think about, you know, the design conversation that we were having at Waste Expo, it was really focused on knowing that or acknowledging that 80% of a garment's impact can be determined in the design phase. And so, you know, secular design is one of the key priority areas of seamless and we really want to see all our member brands adopting circular design principles and methodologies so that garments are designed with greater durability, recyclability, use of renewable fibers and recycled content in garments. And I suppose one of the key features of the scheme and the circular design component is what we call eco modulation, and we're starting to see this getting picked up in a lot of other stewardship schemes.

Other than clothing. So what eco modulation means is that when responsible clothing brands who join seamless when they pay that contribution on the garment, they pay four cents, but we have introduced a reduced price, or a three cent contribution for a garment that meets the current eco modulation criteria. Now, the current eco modulation criteria at the moment is about mono fiber, and it will change and evolve over time, but effectively, the purpose of eco modulation is to incentivize better design in garments with the brands. So designing out waste and designing with the end of life in mind are the key principles that are driving our Eco modulation criteria, so it's just a really useful lever that we've built into the model so that we really can drive better design choices from the brands, right from the start.

Abigail Turner
And you touched upon this previously. But please, could you explain what regulation policies are coming into place that will affect seamlessly members and how the organization will plan to support them throughout this and into implementation.

Danielle Kent
Yeah. So in Australia, clothing was listed as a waste priority product by the government, the federal government. So this signaled to the clothing industry, back in 2019 that the industry itself was on the road to regulation. This effectively is why seamless came about as a way to manage manage this regulatory experience with government so seamless is a voluntary based, industry led scheme, which will have greater influence and input into the regulatory process and result than an industry that just sits back and waits for regulation to happen to it. So we're in a position to be on the forefront and be part of the process with government, rather than just having it placed upon us. Seamless will also be a government accredited scheme. And what this means is it verifies that all of the work that we're doing is beneficial to environmental and human health outcomes, and that it is contributing to Australia's recycling and waste reduction objectives. So for seamless members, it just means that the government has given seamless the stamp of approval as a contributor to our circular economy and being an accredited scheme. I suppose it also means that seamless provides assurance to Australians that its members are working together to reduce the negative impacts from their products.

So equally seamless, has a really proactive relationship with all areas of government because of the kind of its origin story, and it's been born out of a government funding grant, and it's had a lot of government kind of consultation throughout. So that actually puts us in a really great advantage position to the clothing industry when it comes to policy changes and legislation consultations that are coming from all different parts of government, seamless is at the table actively representing its industry. So it's a really great sort of positioning and advocacy role that seamless is playing for its members.

Abigail Turner
Amazing and additionally, please, could you tell us more about the work the Australian fashion Council does and how seamless has been incorporated into that,

Danielle Kent
yeah, so I just sort of mentioned a bit of the origin story of seamless. And originally, it was the Australian fashion council that applied for the $1 million grant, which is a significant investment to our industry, to design and develop the scheme with industry. That was kind of the scope of work that the government funded. And we did that through the Australian fashion Council. And that was, I suppose, really a great way to take the lead from our industry's perspective. And we, you know, there was all sorts of work that we did. We looked at international best practice in EPR, we looked at data material analysis of clothing in Australia. We did a really robust economic modeling of the model to arrive at that four cent contribution that I'd been talking about. And we also did a really intensive industry co design consultation on the model and its implementation. So we had full confidence that the model we were putting forward did have the backing of industry, and that was all driven through the work of the Australian fashion council. So in June 2023 the Australian fashion Council launched the design and the roadmap to clothing circularity, and announced a number of foundation member brands that would guide the establishment and operations of a brand new, standalone entity. And so that's how singles was born. Right now, it is separate to the Australian fashion Council. However, we remain forever friends with the industry body, and that was exactly how it was intended to be. Right from the start, is that it would sort of roll out into its um, separate, not for profit entity. 

Abigail Turner
Amazing. And you touched upon it. Danielle, please, can you outline how the seamless scheme, design and roadmap to clothing circularity has impacted the scheme with industry? 

Danielle Kent
Yeah. And I think I sort of really want to touch on this lightly, but the scheme, design and the roadmap for clothing circularity have been so valuable as a resource and reference point for seamless. It was a really comprehensive investment of all of industry's time and and the documents that were developed were consulted across so many stakeholders in the industry, it has created this ideal foundation for seamless to operate. And it was almost like the industry was gifted this, this work. And when I think about the defining features of seamless success, it's that comprehensive groundwork that was done in these documents. But to set them aside from any other report that you you know you see, sort of being churned out purposefully. These documents were really action oriented, and that was always the intention, not to sit on a shelf, but to start to activate and really see the scheme itself move into that operational state,

Abigail Turner
amazing and seamless. Recently appointed CEO, Ainsley Simpson, she's been in the role six months now. How have operations changed within that time?

Danielle Kent
Yes, so we've just finished our first quarter of operations, so we've been reflecting on our milestones over the last three months, and Ainsley has certainly been a great catalyst for for for really moving seamless into this new place of success.

And so now we are a fully fledged not for profit organization, which is an important feature of seamless, because it does allow our brands to collaborate and share in a non competitive, independent environment. But Aly has kicked off our work plan for the first financial year of operations. We have a committed board of directors and a membership base that has really great depth across the full clothing supply chain. And so in short, I suppose Ainsley has brought an energy of ambition creativity, which is great in we're almost in a startup mode, and it allows the team to try things that have never been done before, because we are basically doing, in some parts of the scheme, new work and navigating uncharted waters, like other EPR programs around the world. I'm sure you know,

we've also, as part of ainslie's first three months, announced our rethink program, which has been designed to recognize the existing work that's already happening or happened that's of great interest and value to our work plan. So our members can nominate an initiative into the rethink program, which then gets profiled and amplified across our membership base, but more importantly, any shared learnings or insights becomes part of our foundational knowledge. So just taps into that idea that the purpose of seamless is not to duplicate or replicate what already exists. It's about bringing it together and accelerating forward at a pace that no organization can do on their own.

Abigail Turner
And finally, now that you have fully launched, what is the vision moving forward.

Danielle Kent
So our vision for clothing circularity by 2030 is really clear and targeted in what we are wanting to achieve. However, how we get there is definitely going to be determined through our collective ideas and actions as an industry. So this is a really exciting prospect for everyone involved. And I'd only encourage any brands in Australia, or procuring clothing into the Australian market to be part of the seamless collective and come on board be a member. There's just so much value in the membership itself, but also just being part of that responsibility Collective is a really important move for our industry.

Abigail Turner
Amazing. Thank you, Danielle, thank you for joining me today on the WTiN Innovate Podcast.

Danielle Kent
Thanks, Abby. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you.

Abigail Turner
Thank you so much for listening.