Nike World Cup Uniforms Made of Recycled Textiles Won’t Solve Fashion Waste
Nike World Cup Uniforms Made of Recycled Textiles Won’t Solve Fashion Waste
耐克世界杯球衣由回收纺织品制成，但这无法解决时尚浪费问题
In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing. Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste.
今年6月，来自16个国家的运动员将穿着“他人旧衣”开启世界杯之旅。好吧，或许可以这么说。他们将身穿由回收面料制成的球衣，这些面料可能混合了边角料和旧衣物。这是全球最大的服装公司之一耐克（Nike）的最新举措，旨在将其生产的服装中加入更多回收材料。这家服装巨头表示，此次采用了“先进的化学回收技术”，首次利用100%的纺织废料生产出了顶级运动服装。
Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion—that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.
耐克高管和部分媒体报道暗示，这些服装代表了可持续时尚的一个转折点——即能够反复回收利用的“循环”服装，很快就能走进普通消费者的生活。
The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated. Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon.
正如你所料，真实情况要复杂得多。耐克确实与两家化学回收公司签署了协议，但双方对相关技术及其可扩展性均未透露太多细节。尽管时尚品牌加大了投资，但专家表示，不要指望很快就能在货架上看到化学回收服装。
“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at UC San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so—at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh.
“是的，从技术上讲是可能的，”加州大学旧金山分校的环境健康研究员维娜·辛格拉（Veena Singla）说，“但在现实中会发生吗？”她和其他研究化学回收的专家并不这么认为——至少不会以消费者所期待的方式实现。消费者购买化学回收服装、穿旧后再送回循环系统进行再造的那一天，还遥遥无期。
What seems more likely is the fashion industry will expand its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric—and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.
更有可能的情况是，时尚行业将扩大这种回收技术在工业废料中的应用，但其规模远不足以应对纺织品产量预计的增长。
Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.
耐克说得对，时尚行业确实存在可持续性问题。服装公司每年生产超过1000亿件服装。在此过程中，它们产生了全球高达10%的温室气体排放量和难以估量的废弃物；绝大多数纺织品最终被填埋、焚烧或运往贫困国家的非正规垃圾场。这一切都依赖于化石燃料，近70%的服装由石油衍生面料制成。最常见的就是聚酯纤维（涤纶），这是一种也用于制造水瓶的塑料。
Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester—mostly through recycling.
耐克及其许多竞争对手并没有放缓生产，而是承诺提高聚酯纤维的“循环性”——主要通过回收利用来实现。
The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so that anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear.
通过化学手段推动这一进程，是为了应对他们尝试过的其他策略的缺陷。传统的机械回收通过粉碎和研磨会导致纤维断裂。由此产生的面料必须与70%到80%的原始材料混合，才能确保制成的产品不会起球或撕裂。
The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ’90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.
目前更普遍的策略是将废弃塑料瓶转化为新的聚酯纤维。巴塔哥尼亚（Patagonia）在90年代初率先采用了这种方法，到本世纪初，几乎所有的再生聚酯纤维都来自旧瓶子。然而，如今企业面临着越来越多的诉讼和监管审查，因为人们更希望看到瓶子能被回收再制成瓶子。
Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units—building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality.
化学回收被认为是下一个最佳方案。该术语是指使用溶剂将纤维溶解成基础化学单元——即可以纺成新面料的“积木”。从表面上看，这是一个真正的“循环”解决方案，因为它不依赖于塑料瓶。支持者称，它可以将你穿过的聚酯纤维衬衫或跑步短裤反复转化为新产品，且不会损失面料质量。
That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multiyear agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries in the US.
这正是Gap、H&M和Levi’s等快时尚品牌目前正在推广的愿景，其中许多品牌已与少数几家化学回收初创公司签署了多年协议。去年秋天，耐克同意从其中两家公司采购“循环”聚酯纤维：瑞典公司Syre和美国的Loop Industries。
Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.
研究确实证实了部分炒作。从技术上讲，化学回收可以生产出原始质量的聚酯纤维，而且至少有一种称为“甲醇分解法”（methanolysis）的方法，能够在反复回收的过程中保持这种质量。但目前仍存在重大制约因素。
Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can, in principle, produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about postconsumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”
葡萄牙米尼奥大学的纺织研究员戴安娜·费雷拉（Diana Ferreira）表示，纺织品到纺织品的化学回收仍受限于合适面料的供应。“如果我们处理的是干净、分类良好且富含聚酯的废料流，原则上化学回收可以生产出性能与原始聚酯相当的材料，”她说，“然而，如果我们谈论的是消费后的纺织废料，情况就复杂得多了。”
In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible—at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pretreatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.
换句话说，化学回收最适用于工业边角料，因为它们比成堆的旧衣服更统一。后者可能包含棉、尼龙、羊毛、氨纶和腈纶的混合物，更不用说染料、化学涂层、线头、标签和拉链了。所有这些杂质使得化学回收的可行性大大降低——至少在没有进行细致分类和反复预处理以化学去除所有污染物的情况下是如此。
“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes … be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said.
“如果我们想让它行得通，我们的衣服必须是100%聚酯纤维的，而且我们需要去除掉太多的有毒化学物质，”辛格拉说。
Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively?
非营利组织Textile Exchange的贝丝·詹森（Beth Jensen）则更为乐观。她说，为了减少时尚行业对化石燃料的依赖，包括化学回收在内的“所有解决方案”都是必要的。但她也承认，建立企业回收旧衣并利用甲醇分解等技术将其制成新服装所需的基础设施，仍有很长的路要走。此外，目前尚不清楚谁来建设这些设施。是像耐克这样的公司？政府？回收商？还是这些实体共同协作？
Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s—whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes—production of “circular”…
即使该行业能在2030年代初实现其对化学回收聚酯纤维的乐观目标——无论是来自边角料还是人们的旧衣服——“循环”产品的生产……