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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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Starter Kit collection

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

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

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

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

Ensure that biological products are properly managed and preserved

Maximise lifetime of biological products

Preserving and conserving biological products such as food, forests, etc.

Preservation, conservation

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

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

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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By replacing your current jacket filler with BioPuff®, you could...30Save up to 30 geese for every jacket70%Reduce petroleum by 70% in every jacket25LSave up to 25 litres of fresh drinking water30Save up to 30 geese for every jacket (1)70%Reduce petroleum by 70% in every jacket (2)25LSave up to 25 litres of fresh drinking water (2)1  when compared to an average 500g goose-down jacket 2 when compared to an average 500g polyester jacketStay tuned as we continue to gather data on our impact

Our vision is to build a planet-healing supply chain and that begins with our approach to regenerative agriculture. There’s no single solution to “sustainability”, and our farming reflects this. At saltyco® our agricultural practices focus on three elements: restoring, context-lead farming, and steady growth. By designing techniques that respond to exactly what each natural environment requires to heal, we can create the most impact through sourcing our plant material. To bring this vision to life, we partner with a community of farmers and conservation groups. Scroll down to learn more about some of our projects!Conservation agriculture restores natural ecosystems by removing invasive crops that dominate local environments. This farming method promotes biodiversity and soil health.Conservation projects restore environments that have been damaged by invasive species. Our plants often grow in unwanted areas where they establish extensive root systems and disrupt the native ecosystem and biodiversity of the land. By removing these crops we’re able to heal the land, whilst making use of a plant that would otherwise be wasted. Currently, we’re undergoing a conservation project in North Berwick, Scotland.Paludiculture is the practice of farming on wetlands, such as rewetted peatlands, bogs and fens. Peatlands are naturally some of the oldest and most healing environments on our planet. They sequester and store 3-5% more carbon than any other terrestrial land or forest. However, due to centuries of irresponsible drainage of peatlands for industrial farming, these precious wetlands are being destroyed turning them into carbon emitters. saltyco is currently working alongside partnered farmers to reverse this negative impact in peatlands located in Cambridgeshire, England. This year we visited The Great Fens and cultivated thousands of our native plants to help re-wett and restore these ecosystems and return them to their original healing state.Our plants thrive in peatland conditions. By re-wetting damaged and drained peatlands and responsibly growing our native plants, we’re able to restore these crucial ecosystems, protect the unique biodiversity, and sequester large amounts of carbon from the air.Stay tuned as we continue to expand our regenerative agricultural projects! 

United Kingdom

Cambridgeshire

North Berwick

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Materials science company that makes planet-positive textiles.

saltyco®

<p>Saltyco® created BioPuff®, a plant-based filling and insulating material designed to be lightweight, warm, naturally water repellent and biodegradable. The biodegradable filling resembles animal down in structure and is created by growing plants using regenerative wetland agriculture.</p>