Planned obsolescence refers to a strategy where certain products are deliberately designed to last only a few years, encouraging consumers to renew their purchases more frequently. While this practice is often associated with electronics, it also exists in the textile sector.
🧥 Planned obsolescence in textiles: how does it work?
In the textile industry, obsolescence can be subtle but very much present.
Here’s what we observe:
1️⃣ Poor quality fibers: clothes made with low-quality materials, which wear out quickly, pill, or even tear after a few washes.
2️⃣ Fast fashion: a frantic pace of collections pushing people to refresh their wardrobe quickly, even when the clothes are still in good condition.
3️⃣ Clothes hard to repair & recycle: fragile seams or blends of non-recyclable fibers often make repairs or recycling difficult, reinforcing their short life cycle. 😉 Paul Dumesny & Olivia PERRIER
In short, it’s a production designed to be fast and cheap, at the expense of everything else! What if we could change this? 🙌
On our side, we continue to work with the French Institute of Textile and Clothing (IFTH) 😉 Carole AUBRY, Axelle Champion, PASCAL RUMEAU to develop durable filaments from every perspective.
🌱 Why is this problematic?
Textile obsolescence, particularly linked to synthetic fibers like polyamide, has impressive consequences.
Polyamide, one of the most used synthetic fibers, represents 5.4 million tons produced each year. It is part of a global textile industry that exceeds 70 million tons.
👉 The problem? Limited recycling and extremely slow decomposition, which makes it a major contributor to plastic pollution.
At the same time, the lifespan of clothes has halved in the past 15 years, fueling overconsumption and an explosion in textile waste.
These figures highlight the urgency of developing both technical and cultural solutions by raising awareness among consumers to make more responsible clothing choices.
🌱 Our commitment ♻️
We are working daily to counter this short-life logic. Our research aims to recycle textiles containing #polyamide to reduce the impacts linked to the end of life of these products, whether they are of good or poor quality.
Our goal is to industrially recycle these textiles, which until now were buried or burned, and also raise awareness among the broader public so that everyone makes more responsible consumption choices in the textile sector. 😉
Source: McKinsey & Company Circular Economy Platform
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