Pine Crest Fabrics, a Portland-based fabric supplier, has partnered with textile startup Refiberd to enhance textile waste reduction. This collaboration will leverage Pine Crest’s surplus fabrics to advance Refiberd’s AI-powered fiber identification, aiming to improve the fiber-to-fiber recycling process and tackle the industry’s textile waste challenge.
Fiber-to-fiber recyclers require a high content threshold from feedstocks to be cost-effective. This approach is similar to plastic recycling, where plastic waste cannot be recycled without properly sorted contents. Currently, textile recyclers rely on suppliers to verify content or use costly, imprecise methods for quality checks. Refiberd is enhancing this process with new technology to boost sorting accuracy. This involves developing fast, precise software powered by a comprehensive materials library for training its AI model.
Pine Crest Fabrics responded to Refiberd’s appeal for help collecting higher-quality data for its development. The fabric supplier is constantly exploring ways to avoid putting sample cuts into the waste stream and was pleased to donate its outdated fabric cuts to Refiberd.
Product Strategy Director of Pine Crest Fabrics, Jena Nesbitt, highlighted the initiative’s significance: “Each year, the fashion industry’s vast production leads to significant waste, with the majority ending up in landfills. By partnering with Refiberd, we aim to turn the tide against global pollution through cutting-edge recycling technologies that promise a more sustainable future.”
Sarika Bajaj, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Refiberd, shared her perspective on the partnership: “The Pine Crest team has been instrumental in our progress towards developing highly accurate software to power our sorting technology. It has been incredibly beneficial to work in partnership with a team that shares our vision of a circular fashion industry and is willing to take steps to make that vision a reality. Thanks to Refiberd’s partnership with Pine Crest and other textile suppliers, we’ve been able to grow our dataset to a point that allows us to enable fiber detection within a 1-2% margin of error—a rate of accuracy previously unheard of in the industry.”
Refiberd has completed five pilots with notable fiber-to-fiber recyclers, waste sorters, and fashion brands. The company plans to deploy its technology for customer use by the end of 2024 and continue collaborating with Pine Crest Fabrics to improve the software.
Pine Crest Fabrics continues to implement various practices and explore new technologies to reduce waste in the fashion industry. For example, over the last decade, the company has increased its eco-certified recycled fabric collection, explored new technologies like dope dyeing, and implemented in-house sustainable practices such as reusing fabric bolts, rolls, and cardboard to wrap shipments instead of plastic.
“Step by step, we continue to develop the eco-friendly approach. Of course, the fashion industry is now one of the most wasteful, and our main goal is to stop the extension of the waste. New recycled technologies, dope-dyeing fibers, digital sampling, rational consumption, and media coverage of the waste problem are all that we can do now to achieve a result.” – Jena Nesbitt, Product Strategy Director of Pine Crest Fabrics, said.
Detailed information about the project is presented in the White paper.
