Calik Denim partners with blockchain technology provider Aware™

Turkish denim mill Calik Denim has partnered with blockchain technology provider Aware™ on a fully traceable capsule collection which allows it to guard the certification of its products. The collection features Aware’s traceability technology and is made with fully traceable recycled materials. The 4 piece collection can trace the particles to the raw recycled cotton and then uses a blockchain for guaranteeing that the original recycled feedstock was used in the final product.

During the fiber pre-production, Aware’s tracer particles are added. Calik Denim then uses the yarns made with recycled materials and tracer particles to create a digital “twin” version. This consists of various properties like weight, composition, color, and the original certification.

To become completely fraud-free, this ‘digital twin’ is registered into a secure blockchain. Every garment receives a unique fingerprint due to the addition of tracers which can be easily read out with an easy-to-use scanner for authentication.

Although the technology is applicable to all kinds of sustainable materials, Calik Denim will focus on recycled cotton and recycled polyester in the first phase.

The company said that in production processes, Calik Denim aims to boost the use of recycled cotton in order to reduce its environmental impact. This will result in saving a great amount of water along with the preservation of nature by stopping new agricultural expansion. However, every day proving that the final garment is genuinely made with recycled material is getting harder.

Since the recycled materials travel between several locations and organizations hence they can easily be modified or tweaked. Hence in the end-product, it will be difficult to obtain the usage of original recycled material. For preventing any greenwashing, this is the reason for industries to work with various certification methods and traceability.