Continuing on from Part 1 of the pocket conversation with Guy from Dempstah.
On shifting the angle from inside the industry
GD: My biggest question now is – do we still recycle materials that have some synthetic in them?? Or should we just have a total synthetic ban, no matter what? Because when we did the Salvos project and I was in there with their sorting guys at their Tempe store in Sydney, the huge majority of stuff that the public is getting rid of is – at least – a blend. You'll find like, 80% really beautiful quality wool with 20% nylon.
HB: Well, you kind of need that, don't you, for like, a lot of coats… All the coats I've made have been like, 100% wool, 100% silk lining, but this coat that I made in 2016 and have travelled with and had in multiple share houses it’s quite – it's falling apart. So I feel like a tiny bit of synthetic in a wool coating, that you're not washing – so the microplastics are not going into the ocean, and it's not against your skin either because it's an outer garment… I feel like that [polyester component] is fine for a finished garment.
GD: Yeah, I don't know, though…
HB: I said, that's fine, but I also just don't buy it. *laughs*
GD: … I'd avoid it if I can as well.
HB: And I think about that in like, I use polyester thread, but I kind of feel like, to keep something long wearing…
GD: I understand the argument for, you know, even in socks, when the sock wears down the nylon will hold it together, while all the cotton or wool fibre wears out. But I guess it's just a question of the environmental cost of that. Just that tiny addition means the entire thing is not biodegradable. I think that is quite concerning. And I understand that it is a practical thing, it makes the garment last longer and means you don't have to repair it as often. But then I consider the cost of it to the environment, and when you consider the masses of plastic waste that we're already producing –
HB: All the Humphrey law socks have nylon. But I still wear them. Maybe it’s about questioning what’s the greater evil. I'm choosing something that's made in Melbourne, that I enjoy more and will wear for years. I haven't ever thrown out one pair of my Merino socks - I mend them!
GD: Mending. That's the thing, now we're so used to all of those strengthening plastic fibres in our textiles that nobody mends anything anymore. And when something gets a little hole, we're like, “What a piece of crap! I've had this for only four years, and it just got a little hole”. But that's natural! It sort of questions – what should we expect of our clothes? Once upon a time mending and upkeep were absolutely part-and-parcel of it and completely expected. And now we are kind of annoyed by it and think of it as a flaw of the product. All natural fibres degrade and weaken, especially if you're sweating on them, and it's exposed to sunlight, and all of these things.
HB: Friction when you're wearing that piece!
GD: Yeah, that [degradation] is a totally natural consequence.
HB: And maybe you're not used to it because you're used to synthetic –
GD: – Something which is virtually indestructible. But knowing the general output of what clothes people are chucking away and that so much of it is synthetic, should I, in terms of what we’re doing [at Dempstah] have a ban on any proportion of synthetic? It would really limit what we could accept.
HB: And also, people don't know what their fibres are. Like, I've been in stores and they've got the wrong fibre content on their garments.
GD: Yeah, when I was going through the stuff with Salvos, several times I'd be like, “This says it's 100% cotton and it’s definitely acrylic.” And I was like, “Oh my god, we can't trust these tags!”.
HB: A business doesn’t have to share on its website where something's been made [or what it’s made from], but it's an Australian requirement to have it on the actual garment. I remember that being such a big thing when I was starting HB – not being able to sell something till the garment had a care label.
GD: I found it very difficult to get the right information. I overshared everything because I wasn't sure, it was really hard to find a resource, especially for recycled fibre. The labelling laws were written in 1996, so there’s nothing [about recycled fibre]. And even trying to figure out the export and import to our Hong Kong fibre recovery mill… what are the rules around this? There was just nothing.
HB: Export and import is really interesting. Is it to create a full map of where it's kind of come from?
GD: You have to have a number on the customs forms for the category of product that you’re exporting. How do we categorise pre or post-consumer textiles if they’re not a product, but also not ‘waste’ that’s just being thoughtlessly export dumped. Is it a resource? I remember talking to DFAT and all of these different government departments to try to figure out the rules. And nobody could tell me. I think what people would normally do is hire a customs broker, which is someone separate from the shipping company that you're using to basically decipher it all.
HB: Has it ever been held up?
GD: No, and I think that’s maybe to do with just how free the trade route is between Hong Kong and Australia - not China, that's very difficult, but Hong Kong. I was like, “we just have to send it and be super explicit on the forms”. Nothing's ever been intercepted or interrupted or held up, but it’s also made me wonder –
HB: – What else is getting through?
GD: – What else! Because there was so much prep work for me. researching and trying to figure it out and be super above board– because we were truly recycling this stuff. I was expecting this thorough, rigorous bureaucratic vetting process from customs, but then there was just no follow up or any issue. It made me think: if it’s this easy, no wonder there's so much export dumping of textile waste under the guise of ‘recycling’ or ‘selling it into the international second hand market’, when in fact it just ends up in landfills or incinerators in the global south. Where’s the oversight of where this stuff is actually going and if your claims as the exporter are trustworthy?
Assumption of scaling and ideas of success
HB: I actually have a book that I wanted to show you. It's written from this podcast that I've been listening to *disappears to find the book*. The whole book [Advance Copy] is just the interviews written out, which is coincidentally what the pocket conversations have been. But she asks everyone, “what is success?” And it's been so fascinating because there's been a few people being like, “well, it's a great month if I get paid. But it's also not the point.” Like – true, same!
GD: I've had to face a lot of that after the eBay prize. There was a lot of press that I did and people asking for interviews and things being published everywhere which was amazing! But it was really interesting to step back and realise all of the questions that were being asked came from a very similar philosophical place – everyone was asking about scalability. Everyone was asking “How do you make this big? How do we turn Australia into a textile manufacturing powerhouse”. It was totally accepted that you would want to go as big as humanly possible. And I remember sort of noticing no one was asking how big should we go? Because we already have so many textiles and so much clothing, it’s a discretionary product at this point. What I want to see is exceptional design and craftsmanship which reflects our culture. And given that, now I’m wondering whether we can ever justify the mass production of clothing at all.
HB: Are they thinking you should [want to be] up-scaling to match the fashion industry’s current waste output? Are they thinking of that as being a full circle?
GD: Exactly. You're right. It was all about scaling to completely solve the problem in one fell swoop. That was the ideal, especially in terms of how people were asking me questions about the viability of this and the scalability of that. And I was talking it through and giving answers that I thought were kind of reasonable, but then I had to step back and ask how big would you want to get? It’s trying to solve a problem that could be avoided with less production in the first place. But that is so antithetical to everything about modern business, or ideas of success. That is the thing that everyone's grappling with, right? Prosperity without growth.
You’re coming up against so much if you are deliberately, like, “no, I'm gonna stay small”. Only recently do I feel much more empowered reaching out to these milling tech companies and being like, “We only have this much space. We don't want a million dollar machine line. We want something small and flexible.”
HB: It is your power.
GD: There is a need for this. I want them to be able to meet us at this price point, at this size, and if they can’t it shouldn’t be down to me being too small and too green. It's a failing on their part. They have all the tech, all the machine components, all the expertise. They could make it smaller. And there is a market for it! True craftspeople and indie makers are desperate to bring production back home, to take more responsibility for how our stuff is made and how we manage our waste, but the facilities and equipment to suit their scale don’t often exist.
HB: Yeah! So like, make it more accessible! Because you'd probably make your journey quite visible, right? Well you are – in your newsletters!
GD: I'm trying to.
HB: So I feel people seeing you achieve and navigate all of this, you'll be paving the way essentially.
GD: Yeah, I now realise that I really want to advocate for micro milling and small scaling. Especially for Australia. We may never be able to get to the huge volumes of production that Europe or some international markets can achieve, because we don't have the population base. And we're so behind in terms of our expertise, the necessary infrastructure, and the necessary players that it would cost so much to create such a large scale of industry and make it competitive (if we wanted to export products). It just seems really unlikely. But that doesn't mean that we can't make our own stuff. There's a different path, which is one that is about empowering small local players to find ways to enhance their operations with tech, like the way Kniterate is. But also through things like forming coalitions and trying to foster a deliberately diverse landscape of many, many smaller players who can resource and knowledge share, and help each other, and band together and deliberately keep production small and hyper local. I see a path forward, and now I feel much more deliberate in that being what I want my operation to look like. A lot of people would hate that because they think, “the textile waste output is so massive, and how are you going to resolve that with just a small, dinky operation?! You're not solving that problem!’ and it's like, well, maybe you’re trying to solve it from the wrong end.
HB: There’s a larger problem.
GD: It is also a fallacy that the way we currently consume is universally more ‘convenient’. Having the market flooded by crazy cheap imports is cheap for the customer up-front but hugely expensive for local government and councils. They have to constantly offer all these waste management pickup services. Charities are haemorrhaging money with this stuff dumped on them that they can't sell, and then they just have to get rid of it with waste management contractors. The cost of that stuff is massive and we are paying for it in terms of our tax dollars going towards all the waste management and contending with the environmental fallout. Different players are paying for it in different ways. The idea that it's just universally cheaper is not true. It's just cheaper for the consumer on the face of it at check out. It's cheaper at the cash register but it is hugely expensive for all the players that have to clean up the mess.
This conversation was recorded in Holly's home studio amongst tea and pastries. 16th of July, 2024.
--
