All Categories - Refinity - circulair textiel product ontwerp - tips, tools & inspiratie

Self education of circular design

28/11/2017

2018….is almost there, how about a new year intention: to learn about circular economy and how to integrate this in textile-product design?
More than two years ago I made a blogpost with a few tools on designing eco-effective. But there are so many tools to help you out. Hereby I will share a few with you that caught my attention.

Buy, grow, secondhand or rent (baby)clothes?

31/10/2017

While in the process of becoming a mom I am trying to find sustainable options for our little girl. For example: Where do I find her clothes? Clothes that she will only wear for such a short period in her life, because she grows so fast. Do I want to buy them new? Or do I choose for second hand? From which materials? Is it affordable? In this blog I show you some options I found.

Food waste(d) materials

29/8/2017

"the future is not a place we're going to, it is a place we create." Tjeerd Veenhoven

Textiles and non-wovens can be made out an endless number of materials.
Well known materials are for example cotton, linen, hemp, tencel (from eucalyptus), modal (from beech) or synthetic materials like recycled polyester. But there are so many more possibilities. In this article share with you some interesting materials made from fruit and vegetables.

Material passport for textile items

25/7/2017

In the beginning of this year I compared different, freely available, material passports in the Netherlands for the infrastructure coalition of MVO Nederland, called Groene Netten. At that moment I started to question myself if this would work for the textile sector as well. I am curious what your opinion is.

Dutch people buy to much clothes

1/6/2017

We have too much clothes and we buy too much is recently shown in the study “Measuring the Dutch Clothing Mountain”. A Dutch wardrobe typically contains 173 items of clothing, of which no less than fifty items have not been worn during the past year. That is almost 1/3 of the total amount in our wardrobe! I was part of this research and would like to share with you the findings.

Dissolvable yarn used in workwear: disassembly is possible

28/3/2017

Three years ago I wrote an article about a dissolvable yarn that makes disassembly possible. At that time the yarn was a prototype and not yet for sale on the open market. But now, three years later Groenendijk Bedrijfskleding made safety vests with this yarn. Sander Jongerius, CSR manager of Groenendijk Bedrijfskleding tells about their development process.

The tetris of design: Zero Waste Pattern Cutting

26/2/2017

Timo Rissanen

To create zero waste with a textile design there are multiple options. For example fully fashioned knitwear, 3D printing or not designing at all (probably not your preferred option). The most known option is Zero Waste Pattern Cutting (ZWPC) and in this blog article I am going to give a few examples.

Tiny design improvements each day

29/1/2017

How to deal with sustainability information overload and start improving your design?
In this blog article I am going give you some tips on how to deal with it, hoping you feel you can make a change and start with it today.

A few years ago circular economy was a new concept, just like Cradle-to-cradle before that, now I believe we have the knowledge and tools available to make a circular economy happen. But why didn’t it happen yet? It is important that enough people start to understand the concept, find it important and act upon it. Knowing is a totally different concept than doing.

Collective for textile interlocking systems

18/12/2016

I love interlocking systems because they make design for disassembly, repair and reuse possible. This time I found one which I would like to share with you because it goes beyond concept, you can actually buy these items and wear them.

Do you still use the job title "fashion designer"?

19/10/2016

In the article of September I wrote that I think mindset is the biggest issue we have to overcome to change towards a circular economy. Thereby I mean changing from seeing the importance towards freeing time to make a change in your daily work. We are all busy keeping up with our duties that it is an extra effort to stop, reflect and act.

What can a designer do to change this mindset?