Fashion waste is one of the biggest challenges of our time, but what if the solutions were already growing here, in our own backyards?
We had the pleasure of sitting down with researcher and sustainability advocate Lisa Piller to chat through some of these questions and explore what the future of fashion might look like if we began to think local. Lisa believes the path forward lies not in fast fixes, but in locally based regenerative textile ecosystems, systems that reconnect communities to how clothing is made, worn, and reused. With over 25 years of experience in design, sustainable product development, and circular economy leadership, Lisa is on a mission to show how craft, community, and policy can come together to transform fashion from the ground up.
You’ve previously spoken about “locally-based regenerative textile ecosystems.” Can you explain what that means in everyday terms?
When you think about most of the clothes in our wardrobes, they’ve travelled a very long way before they ever reach us, and we know very little about their origin or the social and environmental impacts along the way. In the last year virtually all new clothing was imported – only 3% was made locally1. And when you think that Australians are purchasing an average of 55 new garments a year (2) - we are the highest textile consumers in the world - that is a lot of clothing moving about the globe with unclear pathways.
A single t-shirt might start life in a cotton field worked by forced labour, be dyed in a factory where wastewater runs into river systems, sewn in yet another country where workers earn below a living wage, shipped across the world, and then sold to us for less than the price of lunch. And because it’s often made from poor quality or blended fibres, it can’t be reused or recycled when we’re done with it. So it ends up in landfill or gets sent overseas, where it often becomes someone else’s waste problem.
A locally-based regenerative textile ecosystem is the opposite of that. It’s about shortening those journeys and making them more transparent. Imagine if more of our clothing could be made closer to home, with fibres grown on regenerative farms, fabrics processed in ways we can trace, and garments designed to be repaired or recycled. It means building connections between local sheep and cotton growers, spinners, designers, educators, repair hubs, and even councils and charities who manage clothing donations.
The ‘regenerative’ part is key - it’s not just about doing less harm, but actively creating benefits. For example, I visited a WA regenerative sheep farm recently where the pastures were so well managed that the animals were healthier, needed less water, slept a lot, and produced amazing quality merino wool. Or social enterprises I’ve visited internationally that train refugees and young people in garment repair, giving clothes a second life and people meaningful work. These are the kinds of stories that show how local ecosystems can be good for the environment, good for communities, and good for culture.
You travelled internationally this year as part of your Sustainability Fellowship. What global examples inspired you?
At the research and development level there was incredible innovation – for example the Fashion Future Lab at the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) has a full ‘Farm to Garment’ system - hydroponic cotton is grown, harvested, ginned, spun into yarn and 3D knitted into garments in the lab. The vertical hydroponic approach yields 4 times more cotton than traditional land farming with only 10% of the water (3).
But in terms of regenerative fashion design-in-practice, I have two beautiful stories to share, both based in the Netherlands. Fashion Farmer and designer Joline Jolink, founder of the fashion label of the same name, has a super-interesting history - she was the first Netherlands designer to move to an independent online e-commerce store. She was ahead of the curve then and I believe is ahead of the curve now – moving away from a traditional seasonal production model, rejecting sales culture and uprooting her city-based studio to a rural farm in Welsum. She grows flax, dyes with native indigo, and is taking her customers with her on a regenerative textile and clothing learning journey – the highs, the lows - rich narratives that engage customers in the origins and meaning of their clothing pieces. One example is her best-selling Gertrude jumper, named after her favourite chicken, made from Dutch wool, spun and knitted locally, hand-coloured with community dyers on her farm. The last one remaining sits in a museum in Amsterdam as an education piece.
The second example is Hul le kes, a circular fashion label in Arnhem that works with discarded materials such as wool blankets, hospitality linens, leftover fabrics and beautifies them through overdyeing, embellishment and tailoring. They have their own store in Arnhem and stock high-end boutiques around the world. Their production techniques are unique – it is a very different process from working with rolls of new fabric. But I want to share the social and therapeutic aspect to their business model - their Recovery Studio. With support from local health organisations, the Recovery Studio works with participants with mental health challenges, offering a low-pressure and inclusive setting to engage in creative, textile-based activities as a gentle and scaffolded approach to rehabilitation. For some, this process leads to full integration into the company’s commercial operations, but for some, it doesn’t. And critically, this is not the main objective of the program, rather it works towards values of wellbeing, dignity and personal growth.
Why do you believe the “heavy lifting” in circularity often happens at the grassroots level rather than with big brands?
The business models of the big corporate brands are based on growth economics of selling more and more clothes. Some have definitely invested in great sustainability programs and initiatives, but these usually stay at the margins of their business. It’s like tinkering at the edges of a system that fundamentally relies on overproduction.
Grassroots initiatives, on the other hand, often start from scratch with a different mindset. They don’t have to retrofit sustainability into a fast-fashion model - they design it in from the beginning. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), local designers, and social enterprises tend to be more nimble, innovative, and connected to their communities. Because their supply chains are shorter and more personal, they naturally have more accountability built in.
Take Loop Upcycling here in WA, a social enterprise which creates new products out of discarded uniforms, or Remote Op-shops that keep clothing in circulation in regional communities. These might look like simple, local projects, but their models are unique and impactful, and they’re proving what’s possible. In many ways, the real innovation isn’t happening in corporate boardrooms - it’s happening in community sewing rooms, repair studios, and small businesses that are rethinking fashion from the ground up.
As a founding member of the Circular Textile Working Group WA, what are some of the most promising initiatives happening in our state?
When I travel interstate, everyone says to me “great things seem to be happening in WA”, and I think that's true. Our geographic isolation makes it challenging, but it’s also fostered a spirit of collaboration and innovation. I spent a big chunk of my career working in cut-and-sew apparel design and production, completely siloed from where our fibre comes from and where our old clothes go at the end of life. The Circular Textile Working Group WA has brought key textile stakeholders together – manufacturers, designers, the charitable reuse sector, local councils, social enterprise, educators – to advocate, network and collaborate; to support extended producer responsibility initiatives; drive sustainable textile behaviours; and grow local markets for reuse, upcycling and recycling of textiles.
WA has unique advantages here. We produce some of the world’s best quality merino and cotton. We have next-gen fibre innovators like Uluu4, making seaweed-based bioplastics, and Nanollose (5), producing microbial cellulose fibres. I recently made a denim skirt for Nanollose out of their NullarborTM fibre made from fermented (by-product) coconut water and spun into yarn using a closed-loop Lyocell process.
Credit Photographer Stef King & Chadwick Models
Meanwhile, ThreadUp Australia is a mechanical fibre-opening facility – the only one of its kind in Australia – and right here in WA. On my Fellowship, I took some of their fibre from shredded workwear and uniforms to Sambandam Mills in India for a successful pilot of fibre-to-fibre spinning and knitting - the first of its kind using post-consumer textiles from WA (3).
And at the community level, local councils and charities are leading the way with initiatives like the Good Sammy Unwearable Textile Recovery Project - diverting 26 tonnes of wet clothing from landfill in their new washing & drying operations in the first two months of the project. Other charitable networks and programs like Bindaring Clothing Sale, Dress for Success WA, and Remote Op-shops are proving the power of grassroots action. And let’s not forget the vibrant community of designers, fibre artists, makers and manufacturers who are embedding sustainability in their practice every day.
From your global research, what have you seen communities do really well when it comes to tackling textile waste? What lessons could Australia learn?
The scale of textile waste globally is overwhelming. I spent time in warehouses filled with mountains of low-quality discarded clothing with almost no good pathways forward - only “less-worse” ones. The EU’s ban on disposing of textile waste has accelerated innovation, but it has also flooded the sector with even more low-quality garments that lack solutions.
Bright.Fiber in Amsterdam and Project Re:Claim in Kettering, UK have invested in automated fibre-optic sorting capabilities for unwearable textiles – the same technology that is currently being built in Queensland for Project Boomerang with the Salvos. Bright.Fiber have some established end markets for colour-sorted and fiberized cotton and wool textiles – bypassing the need for dyeing by utilising the colour of the original textile - and it can be spun or felted into materials for fashion, accessories and interiors. Project Re:Claim captures polyester and recycles it into pellets for new fibres or injection-moulded products. These are exciting developments, but globally, only 1% of textiles are recycled fibre-to-fibre (6) - so they’re far from silver bullets.
There are also smaller, community-led solutions. In India, I visited Jothi Specialty Papers, a family-run mill that collects cotton jersey waste from garment factories and turns it into beautiful paper products. They have even developed a way to use the leftover paper sludge from the mill as a fibreglass alternative for shop mannequins (3). It is a reminder of how local ecosystems can capture and utilise waste streams often lost at scale.
Other inspiring examples demonstrate how circularity can be social as well as environmental. In Amsterdam, I visited social enterprise United Repair Centre (URC). What makes URC unique is that it doesn’t just repair clothes; it creates a feedback loop for the brands they work with – Patagonia, Lululemon, The North Face. They’ve developed a digital platform that tracks repairs and pinpoints common garment failures, sending this data back to brand designers to improve durability in future products. Customers can see who repaired their garment, adding a human story to the process. One of those is Ramzi, a Syrian refugee with 25 years of tailoring experience. Many at URC are refugees; but they also include the long-term unemployed, older workers, people with disabilities, and youth seeking accessible career pathways. At URC Ramzi has found not just a job but respect and status as a Senior Tailor, training the next generation of repairers.
What struck me most was how URC combines brand accountability with community inclusion. Clothes are kept in circulation longer, but equally important, people excluded from the labour market are given the chance to rebuild their skills and confidence.
Where does policy fit in? What role should government and regulation play in driving real change?
Policy is one of the biggest levers we have. Globally, we’re seeing governments take bold steps, the EU’s push for mandatory textile collection, eco-design legislation and Digital Product Passports (7), France’s ‘fast fashion tax’8 and repair incentives.
As Australians, we only pay on average $13 per item of new clothing2 . Compare that to $40 in the UK, $24 in the US, $30 in Japan. When we are importing 97% of our clothing, that means a flood of poor quality textiles - complex blends, single use branded merchandise and fast fashion. We need to stem this flow of cheap clothing on a fast-track to landfill (or export then landfill). I don’t believe we should be exporting unwearables, however to legislate this we need to invest in local solutions, make the Seamless (Australia’s voluntary clothing product stewardship scheme) (9) garment levy mandatory, and incentivise repair and reuse.
We also need policy nuance for our local small enterprises - the ones already doing the heavy lifting – who can be challenged by the cost and cumbersome process of certification systems designed for complex global supply chains. Policy has to support our local manufacturing sector, not hold them back.
Circular fashion can feel abstract. What are a few simple changes readers can make today?
Look at your wardrobe – keep what you already own in circulation. That might mean repairing something rather than replacing it, swapping with a friend, or exploring the second-hand and vintage circuit. These days, charity shops and clothing swaps can give you the same shopping “buzz” without adding to the problem of overproduction.
When you do buy new - buy less, and buy better. Choose natural fibres and well-made pieces that will last, and look for single-fibre composition, it will be more likely to have a recycling solution in place by the time it reaches the end of its life. Buy local but ask questions - where was this made, what’s it made from, how long will it last? Those small conversations also shift understanding and demand.
And finally, try making something yourself. Even sewing a simple garment from start to finish makes you realise how much time and skill goes into our clothing. Compare that effort with the 13 dollars that average Australians spend on a new item - it changes how you see the true value of what hangs in your wardrobe.
What does give me hope is young people. Gen Z are already leading the way with their enthusiasm for vintage, second-hand, resell apps, and rental. They’re challenging fast fashion’s throwaway culture by choosing clothes that already have a story. When we know the story of our clothes - who grew the fibre, who spun the yarn, who sewed the seams - we see them as more than disposable items. That connectedness means we’re more likely to care for them, repair them, and keep them in circulation. When fashion is a homogenised, global system, it loses meaning. Place-based practice makes it cultural, regenerative, and enduring - it turns clothing back into something with value and story.
To find out more about Lisa and her work, follow her on LinkedIn here
- https://www.seamlessaustralia.com/news/2024-australian-clothing-benchmark.
- https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australians-revealed-as-worlds-biggest-fashion-consumers-fuelling-waste-crisis/
- https://www.issinstitute.org.au/_files/ugd/51e950_5de1c4273202431f8b44812f2685d97b.pdf
- https://www.uluu.com.au/
- https://nanollose.com/
- https://textileexchange.org/app/uploads/2024/09/Materials-Market-Report-2024.pdf
- https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation
- https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/11/french-senate-backs-law-to-regulate-ultra-fast-fashion-giants-shein-and-temu
- https://www.seamlessaustralia.com/
The Future of Fashion Is Local: A Conversation with Sustainability Advocate Lisa Piller
Fashion waste is one of the biggest challenges of our time, but what if the solutions were already growing here, in our own backyards?
We had the pleasure of sitting down with researcher and sustainability advocate Lisa Piller to chat through some of these questions and explore what the future of fashion might look like if we began to think local. Lisa believes the path forward lies not in fast fixes, but in locally based regenerative textile ecosystems, systems that reconnect communities to how clothing is made, worn, and reused. With over 25 years of experience in design, sustainable product development, and circular economy leadership, Lisa is on a mission to show how craft, community, and policy can come together to transform fashion from the ground up.
You’ve previously spoken about “locally-based regenerative textile ecosystems.” Can you explain what that means in everyday terms?
When you think about most of the clothes in our wardrobes, they’ve travelled a very long way before they ever reach us, and we know very little about their origin or the social and environmental impacts along the way. In the last year virtually all new clothing was imported – only 3% was made locally1. And when you think that Australians are purchasing an average of 55 new garments a year (2) - we are the highest textile consumers in the world - that is a lot of clothing moving about the globe with unclear pathways.
A single t-shirt might start life in a cotton field worked by forced labour, be dyed in a factory where wastewater runs into river systems, sewn in yet another country where workers earn below a living wage, shipped across the world, and then sold to us for less than the price of lunch. And because it’s often made from poor quality or blended fibres, it can’t be reused or recycled when we’re done with it. So it ends up in landfill or gets sent overseas, where it often becomes someone else’s waste problem.
A locally-based regenerative textile ecosystem is the opposite of that. It’s about shortening those journeys and making them more transparent. Imagine if more of our clothing could be made closer to home, with fibres grown on regenerative farms, fabrics processed in ways we can trace, and garments designed to be repaired or recycled. It means building connections between local sheep and cotton growers, spinners, designers, educators, repair hubs, and even councils and charities who manage clothing donations.
The ‘regenerative’ part is key - it’s not just about doing less harm, but actively creating benefits. For example, I visited a WA regenerative sheep farm recently where the pastures were so well managed that the animals were healthier, needed less water, slept a lot, and produced amazing quality merino wool. Or social enterprises I’ve visited internationally that train refugees and young people in garment repair, giving clothes a second life and people meaningful work. These are the kinds of stories that show how local ecosystems can be good for the environment, good for communities, and good for culture.
You travelled internationally this year as part of your Sustainability Fellowship. What global examples inspired you?
At the research and development level there was incredible innovation – for example the Fashion Future Lab at the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) has a full ‘Farm to Garment’ system - hydroponic cotton is grown, harvested, ginned, spun into yarn and 3D knitted into garments in the lab. The vertical hydroponic approach yields 4 times more cotton than traditional land farming with only 10% of the water (3).
But in terms of regenerative fashion design-in-practice, I have two beautiful stories to share, both based in the Netherlands. Fashion Farmer and designer Joline Jolink, founder of the fashion label of the same name, has a super-interesting history - she was the first Netherlands designer to move to an independent online e-commerce store. She was ahead of the curve then and I believe is ahead of the curve now – moving away from a traditional seasonal production model, rejecting sales culture and uprooting her city-based studio to a rural farm in Welsum. She grows flax, dyes with native indigo, and is taking her customers with her on a regenerative textile and clothing learning journey – the highs, the lows - rich narratives that engage customers in the origins and meaning of their clothing pieces. One example is her best-selling Gertrude jumper, named after her favourite chicken, made from Dutch wool, spun and knitted locally, hand-coloured with community dyers on her farm. The last one remaining sits in a museum in Amsterdam as an education piece.
The second example is Hul le kes, a circular fashion label in Arnhem that works with discarded materials such as wool blankets, hospitality linens, leftover fabrics and beautifies them through overdyeing, embellishment and tailoring. They have their own store in Arnhem and stock high-end boutiques around the world. Their production techniques are unique – it is a very different process from working with rolls of new fabric. But I want to share the social and therapeutic aspect to their business model - their Recovery Studio. With support from local health organisations, the Recovery Studio works with participants with mental health challenges, offering a low-pressure and inclusive setting to engage in creative, textile-based activities as a gentle and scaffolded approach to rehabilitation. For some, this process leads to full integration into the company’s commercial operations, but for some, it doesn’t. And critically, this is not the main objective of the program, rather it works towards values of wellbeing, dignity and personal growth.
Why do you believe the “heavy lifting” in circularity often happens at the grassroots level rather than with big brands?
The business models of the big corporate brands are based on growth economics of selling more and more clothes. Some have definitely invested in great sustainability programs and initiatives, but these usually stay at the margins of their business. It’s like tinkering at the edges of a system that fundamentally relies on overproduction.
Grassroots initiatives, on the other hand, often start from scratch with a different mindset. They don’t have to retrofit sustainability into a fast-fashion model - they design it in from the beginning. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), local designers, and social enterprises tend to be more nimble, innovative, and connected to their communities. Because their supply chains are shorter and more personal, they naturally have more accountability built in.
Take Loop Upcycling here in WA, a social enterprise which creates new products out of discarded uniforms, or Remote Op-shops that keep clothing in circulation in regional communities. These might look like simple, local projects, but their models are unique and impactful, and they’re proving what’s possible. In many ways, the real innovation isn’t happening in corporate boardrooms - it’s happening in community sewing rooms, repair studios, and small businesses that are rethinking fashion from the ground up.
As a founding member of the Circular Textile Working Group WA, what are some of the most promising initiatives happening in our state?
When I travel interstate, everyone says to me “great things seem to be happening in WA”, and I think that's true. Our geographic isolation makes it challenging, but it’s also fostered a spirit of collaboration and innovation. I spent a big chunk of my career working in cut-and-sew apparel design and production, completely siloed from where our fibre comes from and where our old clothes go at the end of life. The Circular Textile Working Group WA has brought key textile stakeholders together – manufacturers, designers, the charitable reuse sector, local councils, social enterprise, educators – to advocate, network and collaborate; to support extended producer responsibility initiatives; drive sustainable textile behaviours; and grow local markets for reuse, upcycling and recycling of textiles.
WA has unique advantages here. We produce some of the world’s best quality merino and cotton. We have next-gen fibre innovators like Uluu4, making seaweed-based bioplastics, and Nanollose (5), producing microbial cellulose fibres. I recently made a denim skirt for Nanollose out of their NullarborTM fibre made from fermented (by-product) coconut water and spun into yarn using a closed-loop Lyocell process.
Credit Photographer Stef King & Chadwick Models
Meanwhile, ThreadUp Australia is a mechanical fibre-opening facility – the only one of its kind in Australia – and right here in WA. On my Fellowship, I took some of their fibre from shredded workwear and uniforms to Sambandam Mills in India for a successful pilot of fibre-to-fibre spinning and knitting - the first of its kind using post-consumer textiles from WA (3).
And at the community level, local councils and charities are leading the way with initiatives like the Good Sammy Unwearable Textile Recovery Project - diverting 26 tonnes of wet clothing from landfill in their new washing & drying operations in the first two months of the project. Other charitable networks and programs like Bindaring Clothing Sale, Dress for Success WA, and Remote Op-shops are proving the power of grassroots action. And let’s not forget the vibrant community of designers, fibre artists, makers and manufacturers who are embedding sustainability in their practice every day.
From your global research, what have you seen communities do really well when it comes to tackling textile waste? What lessons could Australia learn?
The scale of textile waste globally is overwhelming. I spent time in warehouses filled with mountains of low-quality discarded clothing with almost no good pathways forward - only “less-worse” ones. The EU’s ban on disposing of textile waste has accelerated innovation, but it has also flooded the sector with even more low-quality garments that lack solutions.
Bright.Fiber in Amsterdam and Project Re:Claim in Kettering, UK have invested in automated fibre-optic sorting capabilities for unwearable textiles – the same technology that is currently being built in Queensland for Project Boomerang with the Salvos. Bright.Fiber have some established end markets for colour-sorted and fiberized cotton and wool textiles – bypassing the need for dyeing by utilising the colour of the original textile - and it can be spun or felted into materials for fashion, accessories and interiors. Project Re:Claim captures polyester and recycles it into pellets for new fibres or injection-moulded products. These are exciting developments, but globally, only 1% of textiles are recycled fibre-to-fibre (6) - so they’re far from silver bullets.
There are also smaller, community-led solutions. In India, I visited Jothi Specialty Papers, a family-run mill that collects cotton jersey waste from garment factories and turns it into beautiful paper products. They have even developed a way to use the leftover paper sludge from the mill as a fibreglass alternative for shop mannequins (3). It is a reminder of how local ecosystems can capture and utilise waste streams often lost at scale.
Other inspiring examples demonstrate how circularity can be social as well as environmental. In Amsterdam, I visited social enterprise United Repair Centre (URC). What makes URC unique is that it doesn’t just repair clothes; it creates a feedback loop for the brands they work with – Patagonia, Lululemon, The North Face. They’ve developed a digital platform that tracks repairs and pinpoints common garment failures, sending this data back to brand designers to improve durability in future products. Customers can see who repaired their garment, adding a human story to the process. One of those is Ramzi, a Syrian refugee with 25 years of tailoring experience. Many at URC are refugees; but they also include the long-term unemployed, older workers, people with disabilities, and youth seeking accessible career pathways. At URC Ramzi has found not just a job but respect and status as a Senior Tailor, training the next generation of repairers.
What struck me most was how URC combines brand accountability with community inclusion. Clothes are kept in circulation longer, but equally important, people excluded from the labour market are given the chance to rebuild their skills and confidence.
Where does policy fit in? What role should government and regulation play in driving real change?
Policy is one of the biggest levers we have. Globally, we’re seeing governments take bold steps, the EU’s push for mandatory textile collection, eco-design legislation and Digital Product Passports (7), France’s ‘fast fashion tax’8 and repair incentives.
As Australians, we only pay on average $13 per item of new clothing2 . Compare that to $40 in the UK, $24 in the US, $30 in Japan. When we are importing 97% of our clothing, that means a flood of poor quality textiles - complex blends, single use branded merchandise and fast fashion. We need to stem this flow of cheap clothing on a fast-track to landfill (or export then landfill). I don’t believe we should be exporting unwearables, however to legislate this we need to invest in local solutions, make the Seamless (Australia’s voluntary clothing product stewardship scheme) (9) garment levy mandatory, and incentivise repair and reuse.
We also need policy nuance for our local small enterprises - the ones already doing the heavy lifting – who can be challenged by the cost and cumbersome process of certification systems designed for complex global supply chains. Policy has to support our local manufacturing sector, not hold them back.
Circular fashion can feel abstract. What are a few simple changes readers can make today?
Look at your wardrobe – keep what you already own in circulation. That might mean repairing something rather than replacing it, swapping with a friend, or exploring the second-hand and vintage circuit. These days, charity shops and clothing swaps can give you the same shopping “buzz” without adding to the problem of overproduction.
When you do buy new - buy less, and buy better. Choose natural fibres and well-made pieces that will last, and look for single-fibre composition, it will be more likely to have a recycling solution in place by the time it reaches the end of its life. Buy local but ask questions - where was this made, what’s it made from, how long will it last? Those small conversations also shift understanding and demand.
And finally, try making something yourself. Even sewing a simple garment from start to finish makes you realise how much time and skill goes into our clothing. Compare that effort with the 13 dollars that average Australians spend on a new item - it changes how you see the true value of what hangs in your wardrobe.
What does give me hope is young people. Gen Z are already leading the way with their enthusiasm for vintage, second-hand, resell apps, and rental. They’re challenging fast fashion’s throwaway culture by choosing clothes that already have a story. When we know the story of our clothes - who grew the fibre, who spun the yarn, who sewed the seams - we see them as more than disposable items. That connectedness means we’re more likely to care for them, repair them, and keep them in circulation. When fashion is a homogenised, global system, it loses meaning. Place-based practice makes it cultural, regenerative, and enduring - it turns clothing back into something with value and story.
To find out more about Lisa and her work, follow her on LinkedIn here