Background

Why deposit plays an important role in fashion's sustainability transition.

Deposit is a commonly known concept in Europe. Where the Netherlands saw the introduction of deposit on empty cans in 2023, it is now a widely accepted method to incentivise consumers to return products back into the value chain, such that valuable materials can be retrieved for recycling.

When we think of valuable materials, textiles might not (yet) be on top of that list. However, with the fashion industry's structural and systematic sustainability challenges, deposit as a tool to prevent textile waste makes sense. Besides, with increased resource scarcity and declining product quality as a result, the residual value of textiles is increasing rapidly.

These trends ask for new solutions and in order to anticipate on these trends and to accelerate the sustainability transition within the fashion industry, we teamed up Amsterdam-based fashion brand New Optimist to develop the world's first digital deposit system for clothing.

While the concept of deposit is simple to understand, we've written this product documentation for those who seek to understand it on a deeper level. We therefore hope you'll find this guide useful.