NC trend: Fast fashion leader H&M launches an eco-friendly plant in North Carolina. – Business North Carolina

H&M Group became a global powerhouse by producing affordable apparel, much of which is discarded after a few appearances. Now, it is opening its first U.S. factory in Mebane based on technology developed in North Carolina that aims to reduce the fashion industry’s detrimental impact on the environment.

The project leader is Syre, a textile company launched in March by H&M and Swedish investment firm Vargas, along with a fund whose backers include environmental activist Bono and Sir Richard Branson. It will make recycled polyester from discarded textiles.

Earlier this year, Syre raised $100 million and acquired Premirr Plastics, which is based in Garner. It was founded by Matthew Parrott and Chris Luft, both former UNC Chapel Hill professors.

“Textile-to-textile (recycling) is more rare and we need to build up the infrastructure,” says Karen Leonas, a professor of textile sciences at NC State University. “We are creating a closed-loop manufacturing system which allows for a circular economy.”

Most recycled polyester is made from plastic, with less than 1% coming from used textiles, according to the Textile Exchange, a global nonprofit. An estimated 11.3 million tons of textiles ended up in U.S. landfills in 2018, according to the EPA. That accounted for nearly 8% of all municipal waste.

“We’re trying to intercept polyester destined for the landfill,” says Parrot. “We don’t need to pull nonrenewable resources from the ground to feed the polyester industry.” Parrot says Syre, which means “oxygen” in Swedish, will use an existing 35,000-square-foot facility in Mebane.

But Syre and H&M are committed to replicating the Mebane facility’s technology in 12 large-scale plants worldwide within 10 years. The first two are slated for Vietnam and either Spain or Portugal, according to a company press release.

Volvo Cars and the INGKA Foundation, an affiliate of Swedish retailer IKEA, are also investing in the project along with TPG Rise, the environmental-oriented fund whose founders include Bono and Branson.

H&M is the second-largest global clothing retailer, operating about 4,400 stores. It reported $22 billion in revenue last year. It has committed to buying $600 million worth of Syre products over the next seven years, according to the company.

H&M and rival Zara, a division of Spain’s Inditex that has about 5,800 stores, and Chinese online retailer Shein are synonymous with the term “fast fashion.” Zara and Shein are not part of the Syre project.

“Fast fashion is a business model for producing new styles and new lines on a quicker basis and producing them at an affordable price,” Leonas says. “We have found the demand for apparel has gone up almost 200% in the past 20 years. … It just doesn’t stay in closets as long.”

Haul culture

H&M and Zara started substantially spreading their stores into the United States in 2000. China’s Shein, which only sells online, launched around 2015.

Traditional brands may refill their sales floors monthly, while fast fashion firms aim to do so weekly, or faster, says Sheng Lu, associate professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. “The impact of selling a large quantity of clothing using environmentally harmful manufacturing and resulting in textile waste is a huge problem,” he says.

While brands such as Ralph Lauren or Michael Kors may sell about 125,000 different designs a year, fast fashion retailers H&M and Zara offer more than 250,000 styles, Lu says. Shein tops that with about 1 million different styles a year.

The fashion industry has a harmful environmental impact that is exacerbated by fast fashion, which offers relatively low prices and plays to Gen Z’s active social media use.

The population born between 1997 and 2012 tends to be savvy about environmental issues and outspoken about human harm to the environment, demographic researchers say. Yet many routinely fill their shopping carts with mounds of fast fashion.

Social media influencers with thousands of followers or more flood TikTok, YouTube and Instagram daily with “haul” videos in which shoppers broadcast their latest purchases emerging from overstuffed H&M shopping bags.

ThredUp’s 2022 Gen Z Fashion Report stated that a third of Gen Z respondents who said they care about sustainability admitted feeling “addicted” to fast fashion. The study also
reported 40% of college students looked at fast fashion sites at least once a day.

Wearing different clothes in every photo posted is a social media staple, Leonas says. Those who wear the same shirt or dress can be flagged as “outfit repeaters.” Those in the 16-to-25-year-old age group “don’t tend to buy clothes to last a long time. They buy clothes to express themselves,” she adds.

From chemo to clothes

H&M says it wants to make clothes more sustainable, while continuing to grow rapidly. In 2022, the company said it expected to double revenue by 2030, and pledged that all materials will either be recycled or sourced more sustainably –by then.

The impetus for developing  a better process of breaking down polyester molecules stemmed from Parrott’s prior research and patents for delivering chemo medicine through the human body. He is a former assistant professor in UNC’s School of Medicine’s radiology department.

“Obviously, (used clothing) is not a medical application. But that gave me the resources to study a project that has always been nagging at me in the back of my brain.”

He won a research grant in 2014 and teamed up with Luft, who was a research professor in molecular pharmaceutics at UNC’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy.

They founded Premirr Plastics, and in 2016 received seed funding from Laitram Machinery, a Harahan, Louisiana-based stainless-steel fabricator that makes conveyor belt systems for food processors.

“In 2017 we took a hard look ahead and talked to our families and walked away from our professorships,” Parrott says. They leased R&D space in Morrisville, then moved the business to Garner and focused on recycling old clothes.

In 2022, Premirr Plastics was one of eight global recipients of the Fashion Innovators Award awarded by Amsterdam-based Fashion For Good. The four-person company caught the attention of H&M.

The process starts with machines that shred existing clothes and extract zippers and  other fasteners. The clothes are then liquified and previous coatings such as stain preventers are filtered.

“Then we build up the polyester molecule, convert it to resin and spin that into yarn,” he says. “We take that all the way to a finished, cut shirt.”

The patented technology bought by Syre can process a 1,000-pound bale of used clothing, which is about the size of a picnic table, into “new” polyester thread in about two hours. The N.C. plant will emit as much as 85% less CO2 than production of oil-based virgin polyester, officials say.

Parrott estimates a handful of other global entities are developing textile-to-textile recycling processes.

“We’re definitely in a race,” he says. “There doesn’t have to be one winner. Obviously, we are all trying to do what’s best for the planet.” ■