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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

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

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

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

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

Industry peers to industry peer collaboration to create joint value and identify synergies

Industry collaboration

Working together with industry peers to engage in business activities or exploratory projects that advance the circular economy

Joint industry ventures, projects, pilots

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

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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Nike is a company for whom performance is everything. The company employs 38,000 people globally and last year posted revenues of over $24bn. At the London Olympics, 58 gold medalists were wearing Nike branded garments; their achievements epitomised the standards to which the company aspires in all facets of its operation.This month in London, Nike launched its Making app, a digital tool that shares some of the data the company uses when considering the environmental impact of the materials used in apparel and footwear design. The app provides a mark out of 50 for the 22 materials most commonly used by its designers, using information that is drawn from the Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) that it has developed over the past seven years.Nike estimates that materials make up about 60% of the lifecycle environmental impact of a pair of trainers, whereas the manufacturing process accounts for about 25% and the remainder is split between transport, retail, office facilities, packaging, use and disposal. By targeting and monitoring its approach to land, energy and chemical use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste water discharge and solid waste, Nike aims to drive down the impact its products have before the product goes into manufacturing. The Making app shares the information that Nike has amassed and tries to use its influence to inspire an emerging generation of designers.The app itself is neat, if fleeting (the Nike materials library has about 75,000-80,000 samples in it), and allows the user to compare materials using their overall scores or the specific environmental impact areas of chemistry, energy, water and waste, as well as whether the material uses recycled or organic content. The app is intended to be used by designers as they work through the various material iterations of the garments they are creating (plans exist to update the index with scores for footwear). It acts as a very general sustainability conscience, allowing the designer to make decisions about the impact that each project they make might have. The design is simple, and the information is quickly and intuitively delivered.Making was tested in-house by Nike and through a programme with designers at London College of Fashion over a period of 18 months."Designers are the start of everything and if we can educate the designer to make better choices then they can become agents of change for the entire industry," says Hannah Jones, vice-president of sustainable business and innovation at Nike. There are now plans to integrate the app into design courses in six institutions around Europe and further expand the way in which the app functions.The Making app is a consumer/student-facing product that provides a glimpse of the wider research that Nike is undertaking to address the increasing problem of a scarcity of resources that faces the fashion industry. The MSI that underpins the Making app has been gifted by Nike to the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which represents about 30% of global apparel and footwear sales. It will develop and share data with its members in order to develop greater traceability and transparency across the industry.The index can be added to by anyone who is registered and the data inputted will be peer reviewed.At a corporate level, Nike is challenging its staff to innovate using sustainability as a foundation of their design ethos. As Jones acknowledges, there was a stigma surrounding the aesthetic and suitability of sustainable or eco-friendly apparel."It was always seen as a bit 'Granola'. It would compromise on performance and maybe you'd have to pay more. So we said to our design team to create without any compromise to performance. This started to create a whole new paradigm within the design community [at Nike]. When they thought about doing things with sustainability in mind, it could actually trigger a breakthrough in performance as well."Nike is using some of its flagship products to continually challenge the preconceptions of sustainable design – for example, the new England football shirt is made of a fabric produced using recycled bottles.Although Making is limited in its scope, and only provides data on the cradle-to-gate performance of materials (rather than cradle-to-cradle, which is much tougher to quantify), it does offer some idea of the extent to which Nike is trying to influence the industry into acting conscientiously. Its implementation, however, remains hampered by the high standards of Nike products. Nike footwear designer Vivian Mong, who works for Nike Tennis, said at the launch of the app: "The main concern is performance and aesthetic. We can't compromise on that, it always comes first."Possibly the biggest challenge for the company is matching its commitment to performance with its environmental concerns – which Jones at least acknowledges will require innovation at all levels of the company. Making is a step towards sharing that aim with the entire industry.Owen Pritchard is deputy editor of Icon Magazine, a British publication dedicated to architecture, design and culture. He is based in London.This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.

Nike has recently released MAKING - a new app that helps designers and product creators make informed decisions about the environmental impacts of the materials they choose."Innovation is in Nike's DNA, and sustainability is an integral part of Nike's design process," commented Lee Holman, Nike VP of Apparel Design. "We've created the MAKING app to empower any designer around the world to make better materials choices in the initial stages of the innovation process to ultimately create products that are better for consumers and better for the planet."MAKING is a designer-specific, easy-to-use tool that ranks materials used in apparel based on four environmental impact areas: water, chemistry, energy and waste. Through direct comparisons, designers can quickly see how material choices stack up. The app was created by Nike with insights and feedback from students at London College of Fashion's Centre for Sustainable Fashion.The app is powered by data from the Nike Materials Sustainability Index (MSI), a database built on more than seven years of materials research and analysis. This data has been made public with the goal of helping to lead industry sustainability efforts and provide designers and product creators with guidance in selecting materials with lower environmental impacts.MAKING scores materials out of a possible 50 points. Each material in the app is further ranked based on the specific environmental impact areas of chemistry, energy, water and waste, as well as whether the material uses recycled or organic content.

Some time ago, a team of employees at Nike was given a special project: Cataloging the 75,000-some items found in the company's vast materials library and giving them each a score based on their environmental impact and long-term sustainability. No one had really done anything like it before, and it ultimately took the team six years to complete. Now, you can flick through their findings on your iPhone.The fruit of all that labor was something called the Materials Sustainability Index, or MSI, a "cradle-to-gate index" of everything and anything that could conceivably go into making a windbreaker or a pair of shoes. Making, as the new app is called, wraps the apparel-related entries of that massive dataset up in a simple, finger-friendly package.This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Open it up and you're greeted with a colorful column of options. In a nice UI flourish, the whole thing wobbles gelatinously as you scroll through. Each color lets you view the materials ranked by different criteria. You can see how they stack up based on energy use, water consumption, and recyclability, to name a few. Down, silk, and cotton are score well, generally speaking. Spandex, if the app is to be trusted, should be avoided at all costs.Nike has been pushing sustainability within its own product lines for years, introducing waste-reducing technologies like Flyknit and working towards a "closed-loop" business model in which all of its offerings are made with 100 percent recyclable materials. But realizing that its own products can only have so great an impact, the company's also been exploring how it might affect change throughout the industry. Part of that comes with projects like the MSI, which Nike submitted to the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, an international group of apparel and footwear companies, for industry-wide use. After bringing in an independent committee to review the Nike team's methodology and analysis, the coalition made the index available online. It offers a nice web tool for digging through the data, which you can find here.But the new app represents a slightly different approach to solving the problem--basically, trying to instill a concern for sustainability directly in the next generation of designers. As Hannah Jones, Nike's VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation points out, many environmentally oriented efforts end up concerning themselves with production and manufacturing. With Making, Jones says, "we decided to go back upstream and really try to impact the designer."The company worked with a group of students from the London College of Fashion to prototype the app, trying to figure out how to most effectively present the invaluable but admittedly granular data. "What you want to do is put tools in the hands of designers that are bespoke to their means at the moment of truth, which is the moment of design," Jones explains. "The app is really tailored to help them make real-time predictive choices around the materials they use."Of course, young designers don't have Nike's vast reserves of textiles at their fingertips, and it can be hard to see how useful it will actually be for them to know that ramie uses slightly less water than lyocell. Still, it's hard to fault the project's premise. Even if it's more useful as a reminder than an actual reference, any tool that encourages designers to think of sustainability not just as a fashionable approach or icing on a concept's cake but rather as a fundamental aspect of their job is probably a good thing.

 Nike x London College of Fashion x TSA “Mobilize Makers” project from The Sustainable Angle on Vimeo.
In June 2013, John Hoke, Nike’s Senior VP Global Design, unveiled MAKING to Nike designers.
The Sustainable Angle worked on the exciting Nike x London College of Fashion “Mobilize Makers” project which was run by the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, curating and presenting a diverse range of sustainable textiles and materials for the students and designers. The Future Fabrics Expo presentation provided new information and a sourcing opportunity for those involved in the project, and aided the development of the Nike Making app.
Nike believe that MAKING is just the beginning of a larger ecosystem where designers throughout the world can contribute ideas and build new tools that support innovative, sustainable design.
Watch the full LCF collaboration video here.
 

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Nike

The London College of Fashion is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, in London, England. It offers undergraduate, postgraduate, short courses, study abroad courses and business-training in fashion, make-up, beauty-therapy and lifestyle industries.

London College of Fashion

The Sustainable Angle is a not-for-profit organisation and founders of #FutureFabricsExpo.

The Sustainable Angle

The SAC is a global, multi-stakeholder non-profit alliance for the fashion industry.

 Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Nike’s app titled 'MAKING’, launched in 2013, is a digital tool geared toward designers and product creators to help them research and compare materials based on their environmental credentials.Powered by the Nike Materials Sustainability Index (MSI), a database built on more than seven years of materials research and analysis, MAKING provides the information to enable users to make real-time, predictive decisions. The app ranks materials out of a possible 50 points. The higher the score the smaller the environmental footprint of a given material. Each material in the app is further ranked based on the specific environmental impact areas of chemistry, energy, water and waste, as well as whether the material uses recycled or organic content.The app was created by Nike with insights and feedback from students at London College of Fashion's Centre for Sustainable Fashion over a period of 18 months.