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-By Ankita Dutta.
The National Clothing Product Stewardship Scheme (NCPSS) was recently launched by the Minister for Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, to drive Australia’s fashion industry towards clothing circularity by 2030. Dubbed Seamless, the scheme was created by a Consortium led by the Australian Fashion Council in partnership with Charitable Recycling Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Sustainable Resource Use, and WRAP Asia Pacific.
Seamless aims to transform the fashion industry’s current unsustainable linear model of “take, make and dispose” into a circular economy of “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Importantly, the scheme highlights how industry, stakeholders, and citizens can work together and achieve significant progress towards the 2030 vision.
As part of its opening 12-month transition phase, THE ICONIC, David Jones, Lorna Jane, Rip Curl, R.M. Williams, and Big W each pledged $100,000 towards the creation of the scheme. Likewise, the NSW Environment Protection Authority offered $100,000 for the transition phase as a supporting partner.
Currently, 200,000 tonnes of clothing are dumped in Australian landfill each year. If industry incorporates the Seamless scheme through its various incentives, stakeholders, and citizens, the cumulative efforts will divert 60% of end-of-life clothing from landfill by 2027.
The main goals are focused on encouraging reuse, repair, re-manufacturing, and rental, expanding clothing collection and sorting systems for effective re-use, and ensuring that non-wearable clothes are appropriately recycled into new high-value and innovative products and materials. Citizn behavior change is also a crucial element in the strategy to achieve clothing circularity in Australia’s fashion industry.
According to the Australian Fashion Council, if just 60% of the market by volume signs up to the initiative, the Seamless scheme can raise approximately $36 million per annum to transform the fashion industry.
Seamless aims to bring together industry participants and to foster new ideas, innovative solutions and technologies that will alleviate the problems facing the fashion industry in Australia. The initiative aims to facilitate the shift towards a future clothing collection, here the process of acquiring garments is distinct, attires are adored for extended periods, and circulated with conscientiousness. Given the environmental costs of the fashion and textile industry, this transformation is necessary to improve the planet’s health.
The CEO of the Australian Fashion Council, Leila Naja Hibri, emphasizes the significance of adopting eco-friendly practices in the fashion industry, as it acts as a driving force for the betterment of the industry and the environment. This systematic and seismic transformation will demand creativity, courage, and most importantly, collaboration from stakeholders, industry leaders, and citizens alike. With all members of society working towards a common goal of achieving circularity, we can achieve the future we want.
