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This collection has been built by a community of passionate researchers, students, and industry professionals as part of <a href="https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/" target="_blank">World Circular Textiles Day</a> (WCTD). 


World Circular Textiles Day takes place every year on 8th October.  Our vision is to galvanise the collective ambitions and goals of people, organisations and businesses to reach a fully circular textiles world by 2050. Our mission is to provide a framework for circularity stakeholders to develop and deliver a collaborative, evolving roadmap and to chart circularity’s momentum annually from the 8th of October until 2050.

What does fully circular by 2050 mean?
- Shared textile resources, in the form of products and raw materials, are kept in **continual circulation**.
- Virgin resources are **replaced with circular materials**.
- Dignity, equity, and equality for the **people** involved in all parts of the circular value chain.

We need to know where we stand today to chart how to get to 100% Circularity by 2050. What circular activity is currently happening in the textiles and apparel industry, and where in the world is it happening? The WCTD Collection aims to answer this question by building the world’s largest digital library of circular textiles case studies. 

World Circular Textiles Day is proud to be supported by our 2022-23 Circular Hero Partners:
[Lenzing](https://www.lenzing.com/), [Texaid](https://retailsolutions.texaid.com/), [Bank & Vogue](https://www.bankvogue.com/), [Usha yarns limited](https://ushayarns.com/), [The Conduit](https://www.theconduit.com/), and [Asia Pacific Rayon](https://www.aprayon.com/en/)

## Want to contribute to the WCTD Collection? Sign up and add your circular textiles activities.





World Circular Textiles Day

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Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

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)

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Reduced use of fossil fuel energy sources and/or increased use of renewable energy

Reduce Energy Consumption

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

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

Fashion and Textiles

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Using bio-based materials such as bioplastics, mushroom-based materials, etc.

Alternative bio-based materials and inputs

Using waste materials that have been processed and recycled to produce new products within the same industry

Using closed loop recycled materials

VISION:
Raw materials are renewable, recyclable and safe, kept in continual circulation.

DETAIL:
Imagine a time when…the raw materials that are used to make things are sourced from existing products and regenerative agriculture, via carbon negative and climate neutral processes. Biodegradable raw materials are used for products with biodegradable end routes. Toxic chemicals have been washed out of the global materials pool, disposed of safely and replaced with beneficial alternatives. Virgin fibres made from fossil fuels have been banned, while secondary synthetic fibres, derived from what was already in the system, are kept in constant circulation as a resource. Circularity accounting methods, built on science-based metrics, help to manage a balanced system of resources, across all industries, and in line with the planet’s environmental limits.

Raw Materials and Planetary Boundaries

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

Regenerate strategies phase out hazardous or toxic materials and processes and substitute them with regenerative biomass resources. A circular economy aims to mimic natural cycles—by shifting to more regenerative farming practices, for example—while also maximising the share of circular biomass that enters the economy. Regeneration can happen both at the systems level (by designing regenerative processes) as well as at the product level (by switching synthetic to organic fertilisers, for example).

Regenerate

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

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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An interview with Isaac Nichelson, Founder and CEO of Circular Systems S.P.C.
Los Angeles, California based Circular Systems S.P.C. (Social Purpose Corporation), is a materials science company, focused on the development of innovative circular and regenerative technologies, transforming waste into valuable fibre, yarn, and textile fabrics for the fashion industry.
With its waste-to-fibre platforms Texloop and Agraloop, combined with its proprietary Orbital hybrid yarn technology, the company offers break-through solutions for the most efficient management of textile/apparel and agricultural waste streams. Innovation in Textiles talked Circular Systems Founder and CEO Isaac Nichelson about his company’s waste to fibre platforms and taking fashion into an era of regenerative industrialisation.
Innovation in Textiles (IiT): Can you please tell our readers about your background, how and why you founded Circular Systems and what it’s all about?
Isaac Nichelson (IN): I am a father of three, born into West Coast counterculture in the early ’70s. I was raised by hippies, so social and environmental consciousness is literally in my veins. As a 25-year veteran of the fashion and textile industry, with 21 years of that career focused almost entirely in the realm of sustainability, you could say I am an expression of my upbringing.
My co-founders and I started Circular Systems to address serious deficiencies in status quo sustainable fashion offerings and help bring the industry beyond its current inauthentic and ineffective strategies. We are here to take fashion into an era of Regenerative Industrialization by enabling true resource efficiency via circularity and, ultimately, regenerative impacts on our habitat and society.
IiT: Can you please tell us a bit about Agraloop, your recycling platform and hybrid yarn spinning technologies?
IN: Circular Systems has three break-through waste-to-fibre platforms that offer the most efficient management of textile and agricultural waste:
Agraloop is our fibre processing platform that produces natural BioFibre from food-crop waste and other natural fibre.
© Circular Systems.
The Agraloop Bio-Refinery transforms low-value natural fibre, including food-crop waste, into high-value natural Biofibre in a cost-competitive and scalable way.  With our patent-pending biochemistry technology, only regenerative effluents are produced. The Agraloop can utilize a range of feedstocks, starting with oilseed hemp, oilseed flax, and rice straw with the potential to scale to pineapple leaves, banana tree trunks, and sugar cane bark.
Agraloop BioFibre is a new natural fibre that can supplement the dependency on GMO cotton, and other natural fibres that are expensive and not scaled to market demand.
We also have Orbital, a revolutionary new yarn technology capable of producing high quality, high-performance yarns with a high percentage of natural fibre, using organic and recycled fibres. The resulting yarns have low pilling, high strength, wicking, and fast dry abilities. Orbital yarn construction also locks in staple fibres to prevent the release of synthetic microfiber pollution into the marine environment.
Orbital yarn construction locks in staple fibres to prevent the release of synthetic microfiber pollution into the marine environment. © Circular Systems.​
Our recycling platform is Texloop, which produces high-quality GRS (Global Recycled Standard) certified recycled cotton fibre (aka RCOT) from post-industrial textile waste. Texloop RCOT is blended with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified organic cotton fibre to produce virgin quality cotton products. Texloop’s ‘Lightest-Touch’ processing preserves original fibre quality for the next generation of recycled materials.
Texloop Recycling technology can also manage blended fibre waste streams, including man-made cellulosic and synthetics in scaled, closed loop programs.
© Circular Systems.
IiT: You say that after a pilot in China using oilseed hemp food crop waste from Canada and EU, Circular Systems is now launching a pilot in Belgium. Can you give us some detail on that and your plans to become fully closed loop?
IN: In early January, we started operations at our new Belgium pilot. We set up in a distressed dye-processing mill that we have retrofitted for our purpose, working in strategic partnership with regional partners who build and operate large-scale Biogas facilities and wastewater treatment plants in the Benelux region.
At this facility, we are scaling up to 5000Ton/year capacity for 2020, and 10,000Tons/year in 2021.
We are nearly ready for our first fully closed-loop productions, which will start in April once retrofitting work is completed. Currently, we are optimizing our scaled processing as finishing touches get applied to the facility. Once we launch closed loop operations next month, we will be upcycling all of our wastewater, reusing the water, and generating perfect organic fertilizer as our only effluent all while operating with 100% renewable energy and primarily organic food-crop Hemp inputs.
© Circular Systems.
IiT: What are your long-term goals for Circular Systems?
IN: We will transform the fashion industry, and kick-off the Regenerative Industrial Revolution (or perhaps it’s more of a ‘RESOLUTION’).
IiT: What’s your view on the fashion industry’s current efforts in achieving true circularity and which are the outstanding examples that excite you?
IN: Current fashion industry efforts around circularity are generally well-intentioned, but not always legitimately effective. The most effective platforms are found in the younger and more nimble brands like Outerknown and Reformation, or the historically committed eco-champion brands like Patagonia. The Renewal Workshop is another example of a brand helping to redefine the space.
Additionally, the vintage/re-wear market, which is one of the fastest-growing spaces in the fashion market, is making big moves—platforms like D-Pop, Poshmark, Tulerie, and The Real Real. That said, it is impressive to see the commitment, efforts, and investments in sustainable innovation being made by much larger organizations like H&M, Converse, and Nike. We have been embraced and have had our most future-state technologies like Agraloop truly accelerated by these companies.
www.circular-systems.com


California

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 Circular Systems S.P.C 

<p>California-based Circular Systems S.P.C. (Social Purpose Corporation) is a material science company, focused on the development of innovative circular and regenerative technologies, transforming waste into valuable fibers, yarn, and textile fabrics for the fashion industry. With its waste-to-fiber platforms Texloop and Agraloop, combined with its proprietary Orbital hybrid yarn technology, the company offers breakthrough solutions for the most efficient management of textile/apparel and agricultural waste streams. Circular Systems looks at two waste streams: textile and medicine/agriculture. Their core product—recycled cotton fiber—comes from textile waste.</p>