I think it would probably be surprising to most people
that jeans are one of the absolute worst items that you can buy
and they have a very negative impact on the environment.
It takes a lot of water to make denim
and so if we can repurpose and reuse this kind of fabric in these classic pieces of American style
it's good for the environment.
We believe in the recycling of clothes.
There's an environmental impact which is good for everybody and keeps it away from landfill.
And customers get very good clothing at a very good price.
1.7 million Australians buy at least one pair of jeans every month.
But in a world of fast fashion, our denim obsession has some serious environmental and social impacts
starting with the crop it’s made from: cotton.
It's a very water intensive, in fact the most water intensive
and pesticide intensive using plant that is grown.
Dr Rebecca Van Amber has been researching the environmental and social impact of denim for years.
She says the fashion for sandblasting, distressing and fading our jeans has huge consequences.
Dyeing is definitely one of the worst aspects, it produces a lot of effluent
and effluent is really toxic because of the dye and the salt used in the dyeing process.
A lot of the dyeing is done in places like China
and the dyeing effluent or wastewater from the dyeing process is simply put straight into the streams
so it contaminates the local people's drinking water.
But there are some people working to mitigate the effects of all that discarded denim.
Every year we process around 12 million kilos of clothing
to go either into our retail stores or into our export business.
I'm Rick Mulhall, I'm general manager of recycling for The Smith Family.
This is a centralised recycling facility where we bring all the donated clothing The Smith Family gets
and we sort it into its various sales channels for resale.
There’s over 50 people working in this facility.
We see a substantial amount of denim come through.
The best figure I can give you for denim would be that around 30,000 kilos per annum
we resell in our stores and export.
In a world of fast fashion, for me I'm just trying to create something that's unique and special for people.
From recycling to upcycling, Kai turns plain old denim jackets into sought-after fashion accessories.
My name's Kai Brown, I'm a designer and a chain stitch embroidery artist.
Chain stitch embroidery was something that invented in France over 100 years ago.
I've got a crank underneath the machine where I'm like turning it. And this axis is on a 360 axis, like a pencil.
So essentially you're drawing with thread.
A lot of the original chain stitch stuff was car clubs, hot rod scenes in Southern California.
The interesting part about chain stitch embroidery is it sort of took over in style and fashion in the US
probably around about the 40s through like the 70s, even the 80s.
It's something that's very much a bespoke style now.
I love vintage denim because it has a life and it has a story to tell.
Da was my grandmother and probably one of the most influential people in my life.
She would re-purpose things and recreate things.
And I had this old denim jacket and she like, laid this piece of fabric out
and she sewed it on and it was incredible for me.
I started wearing the jacket and people would just, like constantly coming up to me
and asking me where did I get that jacket, would I sell the jacket?
What I was wearing was special and people connected to it.
When my grandmother passed away, I just felt like this great need
to continue on something that she was passionate about.
While Kai and The Smith Family rescue discarded denim
some Aussie scientists are creating a spray-on denim look with almost no environmental downside.
So we take the jeans and we start by cutting them into snippets
and from that we grind them into an even smaller size.
So we end up with a particle that's sort of like, very, very miniscule
and from there we take that particle and we mix it with a, what's called a binder.
It's essentially a glue. We spray it onto the surface of the fabric, the white fabric
We then dry the fabric and then the fabric is ready to be used.
The starting material is waste, so that should be free or almost no cost.
And our process doesn't involve any heat, we don't involve any chemicals, so it's a very green process.
The beauty of Rebecca’s method of colouring the denim, is that she can use poorly made, fast fashion items.
With this technology there will be some new kind of fashion effects that might come out of it.
You might not need to sandblast the jeans.
You might be able to get that same effect using the spray application of the particle.
We really want this to be picked up by the industry.
While Rebecca is looking to overhaul the entire industry, Kai’s happy having a smaller, more personal impact.
I like to say what we do is thread-based storytelling.
Because we're able to give people a piece of a memory and that's really powerful.
I think if my Da was here today, she would be really proud.