Coats Threads Enable Cost-Effective Disassembling
The summit, which included Coats amongst its sponsors, featured inspiring regenerative and sustainable brand stories. Explaining the Coats sustainability strategy, Sonya Manolova, Apparel and Footwear Product Director, Coats, discussed how sustainability should be introduced at the design stage of a product, and that 75% of the clothes produced in the fashion industry go to waste because they do not decompose at the end of their lifecyle.
“The biggest challenge in the textile industry is decomposing and recycling”
Sustainability is a strategic enabler for Coats which shared its story in the panel ‘Changing the Route to Sustainable Business’. Apparel and Footwear Product Director Sonya Manolova talked about the waste problem in the textile industry and said: ‘Changing the way we do business is very important to overcome the challenges that cause environmental problems. 100 million tons of virgin textile products are produced globally every year and most of them are either thrown away or burned – few of them are recycled. This is because most textile products combine different materials or composites together. How to decompose and recycle these materials and ingredients once the product has reached the end of its useful life is a major challenge and thread is also part of the challenge.’
“Sustainability should be considered during the design phase of the product”
Giving the example of denim Sonya Manolova continued: ‘For example, the denim we all use is cotton-based. However, the situation changes when the thread it is sewn from is polyester. When this denim has reached the end of its lifecycle, you must first take it apart for recycling and remove the incompatible materials. This is a manual process, so it takes time and is quite costly. That is why most of these denims find themselves in landfill. Sustainability should be considered during the design phase of the product with clear end of life strategy. At Coats, we have an Eco Journey roadmap to develop innovative solutions to support the sustainability strategies of our customers and drive towards a circular economy. One solution is to match the sewing thread to the fabric in terms of material type so that the thread can be recycled using the same chemical process used for the fabric. Another is the thread facilitating a low-cost and easy disassembly of seams in order to recycle, repurpose and reuse the garment. However, the right solution really depends on the end of life sustainability strategy built into the design stage.’
Provides Employment to 18 Thousand People in Nearly 50 Countries
Coats is the world’s leading industrial thread company. At home in some 50 countries, Coats has a workforce of 18,000 people across six continents. Revenues in 2020 were US$1.2bn.
It provides complementary and value-added products, services and software solutions to the apparel and footwear industries. It applies innovative techniques to develop high technology Performance Materials threads, yarns, fabrics and composites in areas like personal protection, telecoms, energy, transportation, and household and recreation. It has also committed to developing a long-term target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the highest level of ambition on climate under the Science Based Target initiative.
