Weavabel has launched a closed-loop polybag recycling system to help the apparel supply chain keep its plastic packaging waste out of landfill.
According to Weavabel, ‘billions’ of polybags from the apparel supply chain end up as waste every year – an outcome it attributes to fragmented collection systems, limited recycling infrastructure, and increased regulatory and customer pressure.
In response, it has developed a system that embeds recovery and recycling into the existing supply chain instead of expecting brands to create their own infrastructure.
By fully integrating the system across warehouses, factories and distribution centres, Weavabel hopes to maintain consistency and performance while helping brands extend the working life of their packaging and reduce their reliance on plastic.
Factories can order polybags from Weavabel warehouses to their nearest garment factory, where products are packed and shipped. Brands are then encouraged to collect the polybags from stores and return them to a distribution centre, where they are sorted and baled together with other waste.
Weavabel aims to collect the baled waste by the truckload and consolidate it for recycling across the EU and UK. The polybag waste is sorted, shredded, processed, and shipped to a licensed importer; then the polymer is processed, blended, and pelletized for film blowing at Weavabel’s production plant – ready to become new polybags.
Rather than stopping at design for recyclability, this approach is expected to help fashion brands align with a growing legislative focus on demonstrable circularity in the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and more.
“Polybags have always been treated as disposable, but that thinking doesn't hold up anymore,” says Saqib Ihsan, lead, CSR, Sustainability and Regulatory Compliance at Weavabel. “Regulation is moving fast, and most brands are being asked to prove circularity, not just claim it — so we built this loop to give them a real, traceable answer.
“It works with the way polybags already move through warehouses, factories and distribution centres, so nothing has to change on the brand's side except where the waste ends up. We're not asking brands to recycle better. We're closing the loop for them.”
In a previous report, we elaborated on the sustainability challenges and solution currently faced by the fashion industry. Online shopping is believed to create almost five times more packaging waste than brick-and-mortar retail, with inappropriate disposal and the limitations of existing infrastructure contributing to the issue.
Another edition of the Brief also cited WWF’s findings that the global fashion industry generates 180 billion polybags every year, yet less than 15% are recycled. 83% of participants in a virtual roundtable also named polybags as the most challenging packaging format to reduce in their supply chains.
Meanwhile, second-hand fashion marketplace Vinted teamed up with parcel delivery company Evri to offer free reusable packaging at various Evri ParcelShop locations. As part of an eight-week trial, the companies provided medium-sized packaging and two reusable adhesive strips at the point of drop-off – aiming to implement reusable packaging across more locations if the trial proved successful.
