The city of Amsterdam, as a textile and ‘denim city’, has continuously worked towards a circular and sustainable industry on a local as well as national and international level. Single actors in the textile industry face the obstacle of restricted power of actions, preventing circular change along the whole supply chain. Intensive research over the last ten years focused on various partners in the industry, focusing on their potential to contribute to joint circular actions and overarching sustainability goals. 

In 2020, the City of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Economic Board, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and the Municipalities of Haarlem and Zaanstad set up a multi-stakeholder partnership: The Denim Deal. Through this initiative, Amsterdam is contributing to its CO2 emission reduction goal of 55% by 2030. In collaboration with denim brands, policymakers, and recycling companies, a three-year sustainable denim initiative was founded. Currently, more than 40 partners are involved with the Denim Deal, representing every part of the value chain. The initiative allows for true monitoring of the value chain of denim products and processes in the industry. A milestone contributing to the deal was the development of the automated sorting machine, Fibersort, which divides large volumes of mixed post-consumer textiles by fibre composition and colour. Such fine-grained sorting allows these materials to become uniform inputs for high-value textile-to-textile recyclers.

The goal is that by the end of 2023, three million denim jeans containing 20% post-consumer textiles will have been produced, and from there, the partnership will work towards becoming the new industry standard in the denim industry. The Denim Deal demonstrates how connecting social and environmental sustainability, by multiple actors of the industry, instigates a change in the entire chain. Once this step was taken, scaling up and taking on new partners became feasible, making the Denim Deal a blueprint for the sustainable textile industry and functioning as an action plan for municipalities across Europe. 

REFLOW was an EU Horizon 2020 innovation action project running from 2019 to 2022, with the aim to increase circularity in European cities. Through REFLOW, the 28 project partners developed a range of solutions to make the material flows more circular within the six pilot cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, Cluj-Napoca, Paris, and Vejle. The cities' social, environmental, and economic impact was assessed, and a range of solutions enabling the circular transition were developed through active citizen involvement. The project combined the expertise of the project partners spanning municipalities, scientific and research institutions, technology providers, design and grassroot organisations, and small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash