Closing the loop

Globally, clothing production accounts for 4-8 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases^1,2 and 20 percent of the water pollution.³ Additionally, each person living in the EU throws away 12 kg of clothing and footwear on average, generating a total of 5.2 million tonnes of waste. Only 22 percent of the textile waste is collected and reused or recycled, while the remainder is usually incinerated or deposited in landfills.⁴ As clothing manufacturers we must do a better job of ensuring that the products we produce are used to their full potential and managed responsibly at the end-of-life. That is why Fristads is continuously working on solutions that aim to give worn-out workwear a new purpose through recycling.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1. Quantis. 2018. Measuring Fashion: Environmental Impact of the Global Apparel and Footwear Industries.

2. McKinsey and Global Fashion Agenda. 2020. Fashion on Climate.

3. European Parliament on impact of textile production.

4. EU Parliament. Waste framework directive: A more sustainable use of natural resources.

Together with our customers, we have run several successful pilot projects which have helped us establish both an open-loop recycling flow and a certified closed-loop flow. In an open-loop flow, textiles are collected and processed into other products, for example filling for car interiors, lining for drainage pipes, construction materials or insulation. In a closed-loop flow, the textiles are processed into new fibres that are mixed in with other materials and used to produce new clothes, creating a circular production. They will help us  reduce waste, emissions and the use of virgin materials, as well as lessen the environmental impact of our clothing on land and water.

Fristads’ open-loop recycling infrastructure was developed in the Netherlands and focuses on collecting and recycling discarded clothing from dealers. In 2023, the Dutch recycling process was used as a blueprint for managing discarded clothing on several other Fristads markets, including Finland, Denmark and the UK. In the Dutch model, we provide Fristads dealers and other direct customers with collection bins for workwear. Any workwear can be collected for recycling, even clothing made by other brands, as long as the garments are dry and reasonably clean. Once the clothing has been collected, it is evaluated, sorted and processed in our recycling partner’s facilities.

After several years of hard work, we cracked the code on closed-loop recycling and developed a process for creating new garments out of discarded workwear. Fristads’ first commercially available circular product was a sweatshirt containing 15 percent closed-loop fibres, launched in the spring of 2024. We intentionally kept the share of circular fibres at this level to ensure that the final product meets our stringent quality standards, but we expect the recycled content to increase as we continue to develop and refine our processes.

​​​​​​​This is what our certified closed-loop process looks like, step by step.
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1. Collecting used workwear. ​​​​​​​Worn-out Fristads garments are collected from the customer and are sorted at a recycling centre.

2. Preparation of material. The material is prepared by being shredded into smaller pieces and turned into fibres.

3. Making the yarn. The fibres are mixed with other fibres to make yarn, consisting of 15 percent closed-loop content.

4. Creating new material. The yarn is used to make new fabric.

5. Making the final product. The fabric is turned into new products, partially made from used workwear.

Fristads’ first circular product development began in 2021 as a joint pilot project with our longtime customer PostNL, the biggest postal service and logistics company in the Netherlands. Through this project, worn-out polo shirts from PostNL’s workwear collection were collected, shredded and recycled into new fibres, which in turn were used to make new polo shirts. Approximately 15 percent of the material in the new shirts consists of circular fibres from old PostNL shirts. Eventually, the circular material will be used in all orange and blue shirts worn by 25,000 PostNL employees.

The closed-loop recycling process that was used in the PostNL project was certified in 2022, making Fristads the first clothing producer in the region that can guarantee the traceability of recycled raw materials for a specific customer. The integrity and quality management of the recycling process is certified by Belgian Quality Association (BQA), an independent and accredited organisation. The third-party certification from BQA ensure that Fristads’ high quality requirements are not compromised by the use of recycled content.