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A fashion-tech business on the Isle of Wight has launched T-shirts made from worn out organic T-shirts and designed to come back to be remade again and again.
Customers can buy products or start their own brand selling their own custom prints for free using Teemill’s systems.
This is the first time this has been done; the hope is that open source and circularity will lead to rapid change in the fashion industry.
Over 100 billion items of clothing are made per year, and yet a truck full of textiles is burned or buried in landfill every second. Current projections indicate that the linear clothing industry, which takes resources and creates waste at a furious pace, will more than triple by 2050.
By using modern technologies like AI to maximise the efficiency of the supply chain, products made by Teemill are printed in a renewable energy-powered factory in real time – seconds after they are ordered. There is no unsold stock.
‘Slowing down fast fashion won’t fix it, but when we took material people normally throw away at the end and make new products from it at the start, it changed everything. What is needed is the technology to make the reverse logistics of fashion possible and economical. That’s exactly what we’ve done.’
MART DRAKE-KNIGHT
Design engineer at Teemill
Customers scan the label inside with their phone to activate a free post returns coupon when the product is worn out. Teemill recovers and remanufactures the materials into new T-shirts and gives the customer £5 off a new item.
Technology efficiencies enable these plastic-free, organic and recycled T-shirts to be retailed new at £20.
‘Customers are incentivised to keep the material flowing with money off their next purchase, Teemill benefits from lower material costs and the model is truly sustainable. It’s a circular fashion economy where everybody wins.’
Click here to buy circular T-shirts from Rapanui. Build your own at teemill.com.
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