Innovating for a green future with textile upcycling

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We continue to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day 2020 “Innovate for a Green Future” by shining the spotlight on HKRITA’s award-winning Garment to Garment recycling system that has taken the textiles and apparel world by storm.
A technological breakthrough
Having focused on industrial-based recycling solutions for large manufacturing plants for the past five years, HKRITA (The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel Limited) went the consumer route in 2018. It created the world’s first and only mini production line that recycles post-consumer garments into clean and wearable clothes. Aptly called the Mini Mill, or the Garment to Garment recycling system (G2G), it features an eight-step, end-to-end process that takes place in a standard 40-foot glass container. The transparency of the set up enables visitors to view the components that run the system and watch the whole process involved in renewing old clothes. What’s more, they can bring their used clothes and see them turned into a new garment.

G2G comes with an anti-vibration, noise- and dust-controlled design to minimise noise and disruption to nearby businesses. The process is waterless, adding significantly to the system’s environmentally friendly properties. Such is the popularity of G2G that its set up at The Mills, a revitalised art and cultural complex in Hong Kong, has become almost a tourist attraction. It draws not just consumers, but also industry players from around the world. The breakthrough concept has been recognised with a Gold Medal at the prestigious 47th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in 2019 and a much-coveted Red Dot Award: Product Design 2019.
Explaining how the G2G retail concept came into being, Prof. Edwin Keh, Chief Executive Officer of HKRITA, says: “We wanted a vehicle to communicate effectively to consumers what recycling is, and what role they can play. The idea for G2G came to us in the summer of 2017. We applied for funding with the Innovation and Technology Fund and with H&M Foundation and Novetex Textiles – the three sponsors for the project. The concept was so exciting we got approval for it in record time. We commenced in September 2017, and the G2G shop opened in September 2018. It only took one year from a couple of pencil sketches to a store, but it was a lot of work.”

Intellectual property system supports invention