Fashion for Good unveils the Home-compostable polybag project

Fashion for Good launches the Home-Compostable Polybag Project to test alternatives to conventional single-use polybags in partnership with C&A and Levi Strauss & Co. This six-month project makes use of new bags created by Fashion for Good pioneers TIPA Corp. and Greenhope. These bags are created from bio-based materials to reduce the use of fossil fuels and are made to compost in either residential or public composting facilities.

The project intends to identify an alternate end-of-use for waste that will end up in landfills and to offer consumers who do not have access to municipal composting programs an at-home option.

An estimated 180 billion polybags are made each year to transport, store, and safeguard clothing and footwear. Conventional virgin polybags have a large global carbon footprint and low recycling rates, which have an influence on their production, use, and end-of-use. Ordinary bags are frequently burned, dumped, or exposed to environmental leakage, which harms natural systems. Innovation must discover acceptable disposal methods that are less hazardous to the environment and limit the use of fossil fuels in order to shift this paradigm.

As part of the Home-Compostable Polybag Project, Fashion for Good partners C&A and Levi Strauss & Co. will test important home-compostable polybags, including those made of bio-based material from innovators TIPA Corp. and Greenhope, in their supply chain as a practical alternative to traditional plastic polybags.

Aleix Busquets Gonzalez, head of Global Sustainability at C&A, said, they are happy to participate in the Home Compostable Polybag Project by Fashion for Good. C&A has set lofty aspirations in the reduction of consumer-facing plastic by 2028 as part of their sustainability strategy. This pilot project is essential to achieving C&A’s plastic reduction objective and makes a substantial contribution to an industry-wide shift.

Scaling up the use of home compostable bags has numerous significant obstacles, including those related to functioning, impact, cost, and infrastructure, all of which will be evaluated throughout the study. The bio-based materials used in the cutting-edge bags must pass tests for important performance and quality attributes like transparency, longevity, and durability. In addition to comparing these bags to traditional plastics in supply chains, this initiative aims to assess the materials’ overall effects and prices.

Jeffrey Hogue, chief sustainability officer of Levi Strauss & Co., said that the Home-Compostable Polybag Project with Fashion for Good is an exciting chance to pilot a solution for an ecommerce aspect our customers are all too acquainted with — the polybag. This pilot not only helps them get closer to their objective of doing away with single-use plastic in consumer-facing packaging by 2030, but it also demonstrates the industry cooperation needed to address these pervasive problems in the hope of lowering harmful materials in the textile supply chain.

After the Circular Polybag Pilot (finished in 2020) and Reusable Packaging (completed in 2021) projects, the Home-Compostable Polybag Project is the third polybag project in the Fashion for Good series. These initiatives seek to validate new ideas that lessen reliance on virgin fossil fuels, lessen production’s environmental impact, and can be composted rather than dumped in landfills.

Daphna Nissenbaum, CEO and co-founder of TIPA Corp., said that fashion is one of the primary segments where customers are looking for alternatives to traditional plastic packaging. They’re incredibly honored to have been chosen by Fashion for Good to participate in this ground-breaking pilot project to test plastics that breakdown into the soil after usage. TIPA aids fashion firms committed to sustainability in the fight against plastic pollution by providing an alternative to traditional plastic packaging. A initiative like this is essential for proving that compostable packaging, like TIPA’s, is viable and for increasing scale by creating new industrial alliances.

Tommy Tjiptadjaja, CEO and co-founder of Greenhope, said, they are extremely thrilled to be chosen by Fashion for Good to take part in this collaborative project with such respected global parties. Plastic trash pollution is a significant systemic problem, and using a collaborative platform to provide solutions is one of the best methods to do so rapidly and credibly. Greenhope is ready, willing, and able to support this through their technology all the way to its beneficial conclusion: connecting sustainable consumption and production of global brands with beneficial social impact among farmer cooperatives in developing countries that supply the bio-based raw materials.