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It was a great pleasure For Patrick be asked to speak at the launch of WRAP’s Circular Living initiative this week, and fascinating (and heartening) to talk with people from across the spectrum of the things we consume and throw away about the ways in which they are tackling waste - electronics, food, packaging, and of course textiles and clothing.

WRAP engage with some of the worst offenders in the fashion world, trying to improve the way they work, but what is very clear to me is that efforts to improve the current system will only get us so far. What is actually required is a complete overhaul of many of the systems we have built over the past century, replacing them with businesses designed to thrive without the need for ever growing levels of consumption.

When Patrick created Community Clothing he designed a business model from the ground up to reduce waste and minimise consumption, a model that would sustain itself without encouraging people to buy things they didn’t need based on an artificially created want.

It is our aim to sell people a few really good quality garments that enhance their everyday living, rather than hundreds of poor quality disposable garments that give a moment's pleasure but a lifetime's anxiety about the true cost of their creation and disposal. We’re minimising and hopefully eliminating waste on both the production and consumption side of our business. Firstly, we’ve designed waste out of our manufacturing system by removing seasonality of garments and fabrics, by designing in a way that shares fabrics across multiple products, by standardising on things like zips and buttons, and through simple initiatives such as collecting our cutting waste for use in the production of other useful things (like the amazing papernotepads from denimwe announced earlier this week). We’re not 100% waste-free but are much closer to it than any other brand we know. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, we’re reducing waste on the post-consumption side by designing garments for the longest possible life, offering styles that have enduring appeal, and making our clothes in such a way (sewn well from the highest quality materials) that will make them physically durable, worth repairing, and will hopefully give enjoyment second, third, fourth or fifth hand, in the way that our everyday clothes used to be.

We’re also trying to reduce our collective obsession with newness, allowing you to feel happy to continue wearing the clothes you have for a long time without fear that they are somehow dated or unfashionable. We’re also designing to allow for end-of-life recycling. More of our products are switching over to single material design – using just one material, such as cotton, for the entire garment is essential to clothes recycling. Starting with our Organic Athletic range, we’ve removed all polyester and any other synthetic materials, giving a garment that is genuinely single material (most ‘100% cotton’ garments contain polyester in their labels, threads, and sometimes in other areas they are not obliged by law to disclose).

Patrick was joined on the podium at WRAP by Mary Creagh, Minister for the Circular Economy, with whom he has worked many times over the past decade. On their agenda, amongst many other initiatives to reduce waste and increase recycling, is ERP, or Extended Producer Responsibility, the idea that whatever you produce, you will be responsible for forever, a fantastically important concept we wholeheartedly support. If everyone who made clothes had to agree to take them back again, I think we’d see a very different fashion landscape. At Community Clothing, we’re currently engaged in a beta trial of a new take-back initiative, where any used garments can be returned for a guaranteed minimum refund (it’s a closed trial at present, so we can’t share details just yet). We have already run clothing swaps and second-hand shops for our garments. And we’re always looking for new ways to increase the circularity of everything we do.We know we make great clothes that will last and will do everything we can to ensure they have a long life in use.