What happens to a garment when it truly reaches the end of its life?

For most fashion brands, the answer is landfill. For Wellington-based label Kowtow, the answer is something far more ambitious: transform it into biochar, and put it back into the earth.

In this episode of Progress in Practice, Go Well Consulting's Nick Morrison sits down with Emma Wallace, Managing Director of Kowtow, to explore one of the most genuinely innovative end-of-life solutions we've seen in the New Zealand and Australian fashion industry. Kowtow — a label built from the ground up on fair trade organic cotton and ethical manufacturing — has completed the first trial of their biochar initiative as part of what they now call the Regenerate Programme.

By heating returned garments in a retort kiln through a process called ...