ONIVERSE LIFE RE:TIGHTS Scaling circularity for an everyday staple

Summary

With billions of pairs of tights sold each year(1), their use of blended synthetic fibres, and short lifecycle, this wardrobe staple presents a significant part of fashion’s waste challenge. The scale of this challenge, and the fact that tights are Oniverse’s most successful product line, made them the perfect entry point for circularity efforts.

The Life Re:tights project was developed to create and scale a circular economy solution that could lead to old tights being turned into new ones. To do so would require an innovative approach that could ensure a high quality recycled yarn. After building a strong business case for action, Oniverse invested in chemical separation, which allows blended fibres to be separated at scale and respun into new products.

Central to its approach was collaboration across its vertically integrated value chain, which has allowed Oniverse to drive change at every stage, from production to retail.

The Challenge

To minimize textile waste, reduce reliance on virgin raw materials, and establish a scalable closed-loop recycling system for its hosiery products, would require effective separation of complex blends of materials while preserving fibre integrity for reuse.

In addition to the technical complexities Oniverse encountered several other challenges:

• Achieving internal alignment across departments.
• Demonstrating return on investment (ROI) and measuring sustainability impact. Finance teams often find it challenging to measure sustainability, and sustainability investments are frequently compared to initiatives promising quicker returns, underscoring the need to demonstrate their long-term value.

Oniverse’s Solution

Oniverse invested in research and development to create an innovative fibre separation process. This technology allows for the effective separation of materials, enabling the production of new tights from recycled materials. To engage customers and drive material loops, the project includes a take-back program that encourages customers to return used tights to stores for recycling.

How it Works

Tights consist of a yarn made by blending polyamide and elastomer. Elastomer is essential for quality and comfort but is difficult to mechanically separate from the polyamide. Life: Re-tights uses material scanning and chemical separation to separate elastomer and polyamide at scale. The recovered polyamide is then respun into new hosiery.

To create this loop, Oniverse worked with its entire value chain:

• Golden Lady handles the separation and recycling of used tights, creating new polyamide yarn of equivalent quality to virgin yarn.
• Calzedonia S.p.A. and Ytres d.o.o. manage the phases after the production of new tights, ensuring they meet current fashion demands, comfort, and price-quality ratio.
• UNION S.p.A. collaborated in developing the separation machine and recycling plant, which is the technological core of the project, enabling the recovery of synthetic fibers.
• Asendia Italy S.r.l. optimizes the collection of used tights in Calzedonia stores, minimizing the logistic impact.
• Calzedonia S.p.A. promotes and communicates the project, develops the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and estimates the environmental impacts.

Key Learnings

• Internal alignment: Oniverse emphasized the importance of aligning internal processes and fostering cohesive collaboration to maximize the project’s impact. Oniverse adopted a comprehensive approach, emphasizing internal engagement between finance and sustainability teams to enhance the project’s overall impact.
• Direct control over value chain: The project’s ambition is made possible by direct control over the entire production chain, involving partners from spinning to sales, including weaving, dyeing, and packaging phases, to introduce the recycling phase and close the circle.
• Collaboration: Each part of the value chain contributes unique skills and knowledge to ensure the project’s success.

Looking Ahead

Oniverse is working to industrialise its recycling process to facilitate larger-scale implementation, supported by advanced technology. The European Commission has provided additional funding to aid in this expansion. Future steps include improving fibre identification technology, expanding collection points across stores, and exploring the feasibility of extending the model to beachwear products with similar material compositions. Oniverse is also looking at how to refine take-back incentives for customers, optimising the business model to support large-scale adoption, and identifying partners to find circular solutions to recovered elastomer.

All images provided by Oniverse for external use in this publication.