Grant: Discovery Horizons

The rise of fast fashion has strained the Canadian waste management system. Unlike paper and plastic recycling, managing post-consumer clothing and textile (CT) waste is more challenging due to its heterogeneous nature. Various plastics, metals, adhesives, as well as blends of synthetic and natural fibres, can all be found in a single item of clothing. Currently, we do not have a viable engineering and business management framework to collect, process, and recycle of end-of-life CT. More importantly, the social and regulatory aspects of the CT management framework are lagging. Social stigma of second-hand clothing, inconsistent perceived monetary and aesthetic values, and the lack of a resilient market are some of the key socio-economic barriers. The long-term goal of this project is to develop an evidence-based policy and a comprehensive circular economy (CE) framework in the fashion industry using a big data approach. The specific objectives are: (i) Conducting a comprehensive literature review on CT waste management framework across the globe using bibliometric analysis, (ii) Developing an interactive Canadian thrift database using semi-structured interviews, post-purchase customer surveys, and field sampling, (iii) Creating a machine learning model on CT generation and recycling behaviours using distinct time series and lagged inputs, and (iv) Informing policy-makers with data-driven recommendations and guidelines based on the proposed CT waste management framework. We believe the lag in development of a circular fashion system is at least in part due to the absence of a transdisciplinary approach, which is the key theme of this proposal. In this study, the complex and interrelated end-of-life CT generation behaviors in different geographic regions and sociocultural conditions are modelled using RNN-LSTM, with the goal to establish national wide data-driven CT management policy. This project aims to combine expertise from engineering, textiles, human ecology, social and behavioral sciences, and business. Managing CT domestically supports a healthy CE and reduces the burden placed on importing countries of second-hand clothing, reducing health risks to marginalized groups, and mitigating business ethical issues of waste importation/exportation. The proposed work will bring research institutions and non-government organizations together, creating new science and streamlining our efforts on interdisciplinary HQP training.