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This collection features a selection of inspiring examples of the circular economy, compiled in the context of the Switch to Circular Economy Value Chains programme (SWITCH).

Launched in 2020, SWITCH is a five-year initiative that assists EU multinational companies and their suppliers from developing countries to switch to more circular economy approaches and practices in three selected value chains: [Plastic Packaging](https://knowledge-hub.circle-lab.com/switchtocircular/search?collections=832%3D0&framework_elements__5=111), [Textile & Garments](https://knowledge-hub.circle-lab.com/switchtocircular/search?collections=832%3D0&framework_elements__5=99), and ICT and Electronics.

The overall objective of SWITCH is to support the “transformation towards a circular economy”, and to contribute to sustainable growth, low carbon and climate resilient development, decent jobs creation, and a safer, healthier and pollution-free environment.

SWITCH is co-funded by the European Union and the Government of Finland, and implemented by UNIDO, in collaboration with Chatham House, Circle Economy, and the European Investment Bank.
Learn more at www.switchtocircular.eu

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Switch to Circular Economy Value Chains

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Business case

Allowing customers to alter and modify certain features of the product

Customisation

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Providing repair services or maintenance services for products or parts

Product maintenance, repair

VISION:
Products and services are designed for multiple use and material value retention, with maximum positive impact.

DETAIL: 
Imagine a time when…products flow via optimal collection and distribution streams into reusable and repairable product platforms. Reuse and access models are dominant, and products are designed for multiple recirculation before biodegrading (if designed to do so), or being broken down into reusable raw materials for production. People only consume what they need. Production and consumption wastes have been fully eliminated and multifunctional, season-less and timeless fashions are the norm, yet still fulfil our human need for expression and creativity without constraint. All business models, organisations, governments and citizens play a role in maintaining a healthy, functioning circular ecosystem.

Products and Services

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Developing or utilising online platforms to enable circular economy opportunities through information, product or service offering

Online platforms

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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LONDON — Sojo, the British clothing alterations app, is making strides, raising $2.4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT and Ascension, with participation from Mustard Seed Maze and Vertex Albion Capital.
An announcement is expected on Tuesday.
The app connects clothing brands, and consumers, with individual seamsters who can mend, alter or tailor new or pre-loved clothing. The app has many aims, according to its 24-year-old founder Josephine Philips: It wants to extend the lifetime of clothing, and generate work for the many small seamster businesses on high streets across the country.
“The aim is to increase the circularity of clothing and decrease its carbon footprint. We want to be a disruptor in the space,” said Philips, adding that the company has an “international mind-set” and she’d like to see the business extend far beyond the U.K.’s borders. Her other ambition is to help “centralize a fragmented industry” by creating a community of seamsters and give them exposure, and a steady flow of work, via the app. A vintage clothing aficionado and former intern at Depop, Philips wants to remove some of the barriers to buying pre-worn clothing.
She believes the app will free consumers to buy what they love and not worry about whether they can find someone to alter it, or try to alter it themselves. “We don’t want any botched jobs to happen,” she said.
Philips is certainly filling a niche as London, and other European cities, can be hit-or-miss when it comes to alterations. If alterations cannot be done in-house by a brand, it can be time-consuming for shoppers to find a qualified seamster who can do the work in a reasonable period of time.
Sojo uses software that allows brands and customers to book alterations, with bicycles making deliveries on each end. Sojo operates on a direct-to-consumer and a business-to-business model and makes its money by taking a commission from the seamsters to whom it sends work through the app.
The customer doesn’t have to visit the seamster’s shop. They can send an existing garment as size guide for the alteration work.
The focus at the moment is on the b-to-b side of the business, “getting brands on board and enabling them to offer tailoring to customers and free repairs,” Philips said.
Sojo launched its b-to-b offering last November, partnering with Ganni, which now offers free tailoring and repairs to all of its London-based customers. There are seven or eight new b-to-b partnerships set to launch in the second quarter, Philips added.
Sojo’s direct-to-consumer business remains a priority. Philips relaunched the Sojo app in March to further streamline the user experience.
The latest funding will be used for hiring about 10 staff in jobs such as marketing, customer acquisition and operations. The app only operates in London right now, but the plan is to extend it to 10 U.K. cities, with deliveries via post, too.
Philips founded Sojo just after graduating from university in June 2020 in a bid to solve the problem of what to do with vintage pieces that she loved, but were not in her size. Her dream is for it to become an international service. The $2.4 million comes in the wake of 300,000 pounds raised last September from angel investors including Simon Beckerman, founder of Depop; Yael Gairola, former chief operating officer of Pangaia; Whitney Hawkings, founder of Flowerbx; Peter Hawkings, vice president of menswear at Tom Ford, and Sharmadean Reid, founder of The Stack World.
Janneke Niessen and Eva de Mol, founding partners at CapitalT, said they invested in this latest round because “we need more circular solutions. In the last two decades, we have extracted, processed and consumed more material resources than ever — and yet we’re recirculating less than 10 percent of those resources globally.”
They noted that, in fashion, the vast majority of processed materials “ends up in a landfill or waste incineration plant. Bridging this gap between what is being done, and what needs to be done, is not an easy challenge. We are excited to back the Sojo team as they make fashion circular.”


 Fashion feels different right now. Brands and shoppers are now (finally) approaching fashion with a conscious mind, whether that's through embracing the resale market, trying out rental or finding ways to make pieces last longer. The pandemic has forced us to look at the industry a little differently and has allowed us the space to rethink some of the old habits we got so used to.But what does it actually mean to be sustainable with shopping? Do these small changes really make a difference? While looking after the environment feels like a responsibility far greater than the individual, it’s never been more important that we all play a part.  It starts with your existing wardrobe. We all know that renting our clothes and contributing to the circular economy is great; we know that buying secondhand and supporting sustainable brands is favourable over fast fashion; and we know that the ‘make do and mend’ mantra means we have no excuse to throw things out. But where do we go for those alterations to give our clothes a new lease of life, particularly in the midst of a pandemic? Physics and philosophy graduate Josephine Philips believes she has the answer with her app, Sojo. The app works by connecting its users to local seamster or tailoring businesses and delivering your items to be altered or repaired - via bicycle of course (the greenest option). The app is on a mission to help people in their quest for a more circular and sustainable wardrobe by making clothing alterations and repairs an easy and hassle-free process, whether it’s shortening your trousers or fixing a zip. The app is on a mission to change the industry - and they've got the backing to do so. Sojo has raised $2.4 million (around £1.9 million) in funding to scale the business, with plans to extend its services to the whole of London and eventually the wider UK, as well as growing the B2B business and onboarding more brands (like Ganni who they partnered with in November 2021) to offer alterations and repairs to their customers. We caught up with Philips to find out more about why she started the app, her big plans for Sojo and what we can all do to help the planet.        Daphne Milner 
How did you come up with the concept of Sojo?“I came up with the concept, like many other entrepreneurs, from a personal problem. I had moved away from fast-fashion and was relying nearly entirely on shopping second-hand. This was great, except I kept finding these amazing one-off pieces that I loved, but that wasn’t my size. I knew altering them would be a solution, but I didn’t know how to sew and getting my grandma or a seamster to do it seemed too much time and effort. Slowly but surely a pile of clothes that needed to be altered gathered in a drawer and I knew I wanted a really simple way to get them fitted to me. In very Gen-Z fashion, I thought, it would be great if it could be done on an app - and Sojo was born.”Your app helps support small businesses by connecting them to the consumer, why was this important for you?“I think for me, the aspect of Sojo that supports small businesses fell into place quite naturally. There was a consumer need, with lots of young people shopping second-hand and becoming more conscious of sustainable fashion, and then on the other side, there were all these seamsters who had decades of experience and yet weren’t tapping into the younger demographic that had so much potential. “These shops were losing business along with the rest of the ‘dying high-street’ and it made me want to be the go-between that would be doing good for both sides while building a business in itself in the middle. I personally like knowing who I’m supporting when I’m buying and I think that’s why we have the app feature where you can read about the story of the seamster you’re about to use, and also see their picture. I didn’t want customers to feel detached from the local business they were supporting just because they were doing it on their phone.”                   
 What do you think needs to change in the industry to make it more sustainable?“It’s a big question with plenty of tangents that I could go down but, overarchingly, to make the industry more sustainable we need to look at every single aspect of the supply chain and the life cycle of our clothes. Each step of the process needs re-evaluating and reinventing with ethics in mind. From the materials being made (for example whether they’re organic); to the farmers who are making them (bringing down their suicide rates); to the dyeing processes (stopping its pollution of water supplies); to the factories that turn them into clothes (looking at their pollution output); to the, majority, women of colour garment workers (dismantling how they are exploited and mistreated); to the consumer's attitude towards buying (consumerism and wanting to stay up to date with trends); to how we look after the clothes that we own (re-wearing them often, repairing and altering them); to how we dispose of them (whether they get recycled or go to landfill).  “It’s a horrifically long list, it’s not exhaustive and I’ve barely touched the surface. From among that list, for me personally, I am pulled towards starting with the ‘people’ aspect of the fast-fashion industry - eliminating all the ways that garment workers are exploited and mistreated - and also looking at what we can control from a consumer perspective; looking after our clothes and elongating the lifespan of our clothes, and implementing a more circular model."What do you wish people knew more about when it comes to the fashion industry?“When you give your clothes to charity or you even put them in a clothing recycling unit, that doesn’t necessarily mean they get re-sold or even recycled. Quite often these clothes that you think you’re giving a new life will still end up in the landfill.”       Daphne Milner 
What’s the smallest change a consumer could make to become more eco-conscious?“I’m going to be biased and say that they should be buying less and trying to look after the clothes that they already own with more love. And really trying to unpack and reverse the notion that we should always be buying new clothes and keeping up with all the trends, and instead try and value what we already have in our wardrobes. “However, if that can’t be done (and it’s incredibly difficult to do given the consumerist culture we live in) and if they’re going to shop, they should shop second-hand! Those clothes are already in existence and although they might not be new, they’d be new to you which feels just as good.”What do you think the biggest misconception about sustainable fashion is?“That it’s expensive. I know that there’s a big problem of privilege and classism in the sustainable fashion movement, and it’s rightful to say that not everyone can afford a £50 T-shirt, but I think that it’s so important to remember that ‘sustainable fashion’ doesn’t mean just buying from sustainable brands. As I’ve mentioned, you could be taking part in sustainable fashion by not really buying anything new at all. You can also take part by engaging in clothes swapping, which again is free - whether that be with your family and friends or on a clothes-swapping app like Nuw.        Daphne Milner 
“Equally, you can engage with fashion rental which allows you to get that ‘new item’ fix without buying it, and you can still keep up with the trends. And also second-hand! I was a uni student when I began engaging in sustainable fashion and that meant shopping in charity shops or at car boot sales or at kilo sales. Buying from brands that are expensive as a result of them valuing the people and the planet the way they should be valuing them isn’t the only way to be involved in sustainable fashion at all." What should consumers look out for when shopping sustainably?“I read somewhere that buying an item of clothing should be like choosing a tattoo. It should be something that’s really well thought out, that isn’t an impulse, that you really love and that is something you think you can keep and love for life. My grandma recently gave me a dress that she wore back in the 1960s; she’s had it for over 60 years. Now that may be a little bit of a reach for most people at the moment, but really trying to think about the longevity of an item is one of the most important things for shopping sustainably I think.”What’s next for Sojo?“After lockdown, when we’re able to prove that the business works successfully here in London, I want to expand throughout the UK quickly so that more people get to use Sojo. The more people altering and repairing their clothes the better, so we’ll definitely be growing outside of the capital and also hopefully outside of the UK at some point, too." In need of some at-home inspiration? Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for skincare and self-care, the latest cultural hits to read and download, and the little luxuries that make staying in so much more satisfying.SIGN UP Plus, sign up here to get Harper’s Bazaar magazine delivered straight to your door.SIGN UP  This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
 

London

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The UK first clothing repair and alterations app. A network of tailors and a fleet of cyclists, garments are picked up and dropped off carbon-free and repaired locally. 

Sojo

<p>Based in London, this clothing repair and alterations app connects users to a network of local seamsters via bike, with home pick up, and delivery. By simplifying repairs, Sojo aims to start a mending revolution.</p>

Sojo - the UK's first clothing repair app connects users to local seamsters via bike

Engage and guide customers and consumers to ensure circular use of products

Customer / consumer collaboration

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

Specific programmes or initiatives to help customers become more circular 

Customer programmes

<p>Sojo is a direct-to-consumer platform that connects customers to local seamstresses for repair. Items are picked up and dropped off by a bicycle courier, and Sojo offers services to businesses as well. </p>