Ganni introduces in-house recycling scheme to repurpose fabric waste

Danish fashion brand Ganni is introducing a new in-house recycling initiative to recycle its cut-off production scraps into new clothing.

The affordable luxury brand explained that T-shirts are one of its key product categories, however, conventional production methods create up to 20 percent cut-off waste, meaning that Ganni produces 12 tonnes of cotton scraps annually. Those off-cuts are now being recycled in-house and reintroduced into production.

Nicolaj Reffstrup, founder at Ganni, said in a statement: “Fashion supply chains are immensely complex and opaque, so things like waste streams are often ignored. We need to analyse and understand our production processes in more detail in order to allow for small but majorly important improvements like this to happen. For us, this is a great case study that can be rolled out with more suppliers over time.”

Ganni creates new recycled yarn using off-cuts from production

Every day, thousands of tonnes of fabric are wasted in fashion supply chains, where up to a quarter of all fabrics end up as cut-offs during the garment production process, explains Ganni in the press release, only to be discarded as waste or downcycled into various forms of insulation.

Motivated by this, Ganni has partnered with its supply chain to successfully develop a new recycled yarn, a process that has taken the brand more than 12 months to perfect. The fibre-to-fibre recycled yarn contains 50 percent recycled cotton scraps and 50 percent GOTS-certified cotton and will be used to produce T-shirts for the brand’s collections moving forward.

Ganni currently down-cycles all cut-off waste through different schemes and added that it's looking to roll out the recycling scheme set up for the T-shirts to more fabrics and production processes.

The first T-shirts generated from the recycling scheme will launch in May with Ganni's pre-autumn/winter 2023 collection.