Between a quarter and nearly half of the fabric used in garment manufacturing never makes it into the final product. Known as production leftovers, these materials—generated during cutting, overproduction or fabric defects—can account for as much as 25 to 42 percent of total material use.
For Estonian designer and researcher Reet Aus, that statistic denotes not just waste, but a design flaw embedded in the fashion system.
“Production leftovers are a significant and realistic source for industrial upcycling at scale,” Aus said.
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Long before circularity became a fixture of sustainability messaging, Aus was examining how that waste could be systematically redirected. Her curiosity began during her fashion studies, when she started questioning where the industry’s environmental impact actually originates—and what role designers could play in reducing it.
“While researching the industry more deeply, I realized that the largest environmental impact does not come from the design stage itself, but from the manufacturing process,” she said. “That insight fundamentally shaped my approach.”
Building on this realization, Aus shifted her focus beyond garment design to explore how design decisions could influence factory systems. Rather than treating leftover materials as inevitable byproducts, she investigated whether they could be reintegrated into production.
“I began exploring production systems to find ways design could minimize environmental impact within manufacturing.”
That research ultimately led to the development of Upmade, a certification system that integrates industrial upcycling into existing factory operations. The model focuses on redirecting production leftovers—including unused fabric rolls and other surplus materials—back into the manufacturing process to create new garments.
Cutting waste is often cited as the primary source of textile loss, but Aus notes that waste arises at multiple stages of production.
“Upmade can operate in optimized production environments as well, since a significant share of textile waste does not originate from cutting inefficiencies but from overproduction, defective fabrics and other characteristics of large-scale manufacturing,” she said.
Through the Upmade system, these materials may be systematically captured and reintroduced into production streams. According to the company’s research, up to 80 percent of a factory’s production waste can be redirected for industrial upcycling.
“Fabric roll ends are ideal for industrial upcycling, while cutting scraps are suitable for mechanical recycling,” Aus explained.
Unlike many sustainability initiatives that focus on new materials or downstream solutions, Upmade is unique in its integration at the manufacturing stage. The system functions as a certification framework embedded directly into factory operations, documenting leftover materials and tracking their use throughout the production process.
For factories adopting Upmade, the incentive is both environmental and commercial.
“It allows them to utilize fabric that would otherwise become waste, sell more of their core service—sewing—and helps create more stable, long-term relationships with clients,” Aus said.
Traceability plays a central role in the system. Upmade’s digital platform integrates with a factory’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, enabling manufacturers and brands to track materials and production data in real time.
“The Upmade digital platform, integrated with the factory’s ERP system, ensures transparency and a real-time traceable material flow,” Aus said.
The system performs waste analysis and product-level lifecycle assessments, generating environmental impact data that can feed directly into Digital Product Passports.
That level of transparency can be surprising to brand partners, many of whom have limited visibility into factory waste streams.
“For many brand partners, it has been surprising to see how much waste is generated during the production process, as this is information brands usually do not have access to,” Aus said.
According to Aus, exposing those realities is a necessary first step toward improving efficiency and building circular systems.
As the European Union prepares to roll out Digital Product Passport requirements under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, many brands are discovering how little detailed supply chain data they currently possess.
“Most brands do not have transparent supply chains, which means they are often not able to share information at this level of detail,” Aus said.
Tracing materials to their origins remains a challenge, particularly for brands sourcing through wholesalers.
“If a brand purchases fabric from a wholesaler, it often becomes impossible to trace the material back to the original producer or identify details such as the region where the cotton was grown,” she said.
Adding to this complexity, conducting lifecycle assessments at the garment level requires detailed, region-specific data on raw materials, water use and manufacturing inputs—information that must also be validated.
“Conducting an LCA requires very detailed, region-specific information all the way back to the raw material level, and this data must also be validated, which makes the process quite costly,” Aus said.
For Aus, these requirements reinforce the need to rethink product development from the earliest stages.
“Circular design thinking needs to be integrated from the design and product development stages onward,” she said. “When this approach is embedded early, it becomes much easier to obtain the necessary information from production.”
Although industrial upcycling is frequently framed as a temporary solution, Aus argues it should become a permanent feature of garment manufacturing.
“Industrial upcycling should be permanently integrated into production systems rather than seen only as a transitional solution,” she said.
In her view, a fully circular system would combine multiple strategies: smarter product design, industrial upcycling, recycling infrastructure and take-back programs.
“Industrial upcycling would be integrated into manufacturing, turning production leftovers into new products. Remaining material waste would be directed into recycling,” she said.
The model, she adds, is already viable.
“This kind of system is not science fiction,” Aus said. “We already apply these principles with our own brand.”
But wider industry change still hinges on one fundamental shift.
“Everything begins with transparency.”
This article was published in SJ’s sustainability report. Click here to read more.
