Diverting textiles from landfill key to true sustainability

AU Financial Review

20 hours ago

'The fashion and textile sector is fuelling mass overconsumption and waste pollution,' UNEP Chemicals and Health Branch chief Jacqueline Alvarez told the conference.
'As the industry continues to rapidly grow, so will its environmental impact unless a shift towards circularity and sustainable production and consumption is taken by all actors.'
That's where Upparel, a pioneering textile recycling company, has stepped into the breach, creating a circular textile economy based on a new product made from natural and synthetic fibre with a focus on end of life solutions as opposed to solving the problem with overconsumption at a consumer level.
'We have developed a new sustainable fibreboard called Uptex,' says Upparel CEO Michael Elias. 'It's being used for furniture, consumer items and packaging, but it has a massive future in the construction industry.'
He explains that while many construction materials are unsustainable and contribute significantly to energy consumption and global warming, they're developing Uptex to tick all the boxes for fire retardants, thermal activity, acoustics and building loads.'
'I'm confident that by February next year, we will be more competitive than any other acoustic construction products that we challenge in the market,' he says.
Elias and his wife Tina founded Upparel five years ago and have developed it into a national company that has saved almost 15 million textile items from landfill and prevented 7.7 million kilograms of greenhouse gas from polluting the atmosphere.
The company has been recognised among The Australian Financial Review's 2025 list of sustainability leaders.
'We've grown into this incredibly engaged community with more than 1000 partners and more than 80,000 users,' says Tina.
A pioneering approach
Michael says he's particularly proud of the company's listing as a Certified B Corporation.
'It means every element of everything we do is measured,' he explains. 'For instance, we need to report the water usage coming out of our bathrooms and whether it's mains, tank or recycled water.'
He adds, 'We adhere to the highest level of environmental requirements, and that's seen me at United Nations conferences presenting on the world of traceability and transparency with a commercial focus.'
'We've invested in the most advanced equipment and machinery to be able, through an automated process, to convert textiles like clothing into a construction material board within 15 minutes.'
Michael says their system can track where each consignment of textiles came from and when, which container and machine it went into during the manufacturing process and which Uptex panel it became.
'So, we will be able to tell that a particular board ready to be placed as a ceiling panel in a commercial space came from a delivery of textiles from a certain customer on a certain date,' he outlines.
'We've achieved complete traceability and transparency, and that's been a major goal of ours right from the start because the industry is filled with rogues and, for us, being a completely open book is a necessary part of success.'
Michael also points out the significant benefits of their approach. 'There are huge environmental, energy-saving and social benefits,' he adds. 'We've created a revolutionary new product without harvesting any virgin material or using water or gases. Everything we do is mechanical.'
'Now that we've written a playbook on how it's done, I want to see us do this globally. No question about it.'