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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

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Rampant material extraction is pushing the ecosystems of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to their limits. Over 11% of global raw materials are extracted within the region, yet it represents only about 8% of the world's population.

[*The Circularity Gap Report* (CGR) Latin America and the Caribbean](https://www.circularity-gap.world/lac), a first of its kind, demonstrates how the region can leverage the circular economy to tackle systemic inefficiencies in satisfying societal needs, conserve its unique natural wealth, and improve its people’s well-being.

To devise pathways for a circular transition, the report analysed the sectors where circular interventions could yield the most positive impact—environmentally, economically, and socially. This entails shifting to a circular food system, building a circular built environment, advancing circular manufacturing, transforming the energy system, reducing waste generation, and improve waste cycling.

[Circle Economy](https://www.circle-economy.com/) is a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. We empower industries, cities, and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Our vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, our goal is to double global circularity by 2032. Through the Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative, our mission is to deliver Circularity Metrics that measure the state of the global and national economy and identify key levers to transition to circularity. 

Latin America Collection

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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 social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social 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 quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

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)

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Producing and providing leisure and personal products and services for consumers, such as cleaning products, sports equipment and toys, personal and beauty care products, as well as domestic and personal services such as caretaking, cleaning, hairdressing and other beauty treatment, funeral and related activities

Personal Products 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

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

Customer / consumer collaboration

Allowing customers to alter and modify certain features of the product

Customisation

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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En Bogotá a diario se genera un promedio de 318 toneladas de residuos textiles, que en un podrían ser 97% aprovechables. Sin embargo, eso no sucede, pues en Colombia el reciclaje de este tipo de materiales solo alcanza el 5%.
Según la organización Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), en el Reino Unido, una persona utiliza una prenda 3,3 años y luego la desecha, pricipalmente por daños o porque simplemente pasó de moda. 
Por otro lado, el movimiento global Fashion Revolution indicó que la industria de la ropa es responsable de generar 92 millones de toneladas de desperdicios sólidos al año en el mundo y al confeccionarse produce 1,715 millones de toneladas de emisiones de dióxido de carbono (CO2), lo que convierte a este sector en el segundo más contaminante del mundo, después de la industria petrolera. 
Le puede interesar: Mexicanos intercambian basura por alimentos
Según las proyecciones hechas en varios estudios, los desechos textiles aumentarán en un 60%, aproximadamente, de aquí al 2030, generando 148 millones de toneladas anuales. Si a este panorama se suma que una prenda puede tardar entre un mes y hasta 500 años o más en descomponerse o degradarse, dependiendo del tipo de tejido y los productos químicos con los que fue tratada, urgen soluciones para mitigar su impacto medioambiental. 
Una novedosa alternativa para contrarrestar esta problemática surgió al interior de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. En el marco del Taller de Proyectos Interdisciplinarios (TPI), una asignatura que deben cursar todos los estudiantes de ingeniería y en la que desarrollan soluciones a problemas de la industria, un grupo de estudiantes planteó un proyecto para aprovechar más los residuos textiles. 
La propuesta se basó en utilizar las propiedades que tienen los textiles en la fabricación de placas que pudieran servir como aislantes térmicos y sonoros, útiles para la construcción de viviendas y cuartos fríos, entre otras infraestructuras, a un costo más bajo que los productos que se encuentran en el mercado actual. 
Las placas o láminas están hechas de plástico reutilizado y desechos textiles. Foto: Juan Sebastián Torres. 
Para lograrlo, los estudiantes Juan Sebastián Torres, de Ingeniería Mecánica, Carlos Pérez, de Ingeniería Electrónica, y Valentina Monsalve y Yamid Rivera, de Ingeniería Química, asesorados por el profesor Alejandro Boyacá, se dieron a la tarea de reunir plásticos utilizados –el otro material del que se componen las láminas- y los desechos textiles para luego molerlos y armar con estos la placa con una prensa hidráulica, a partir de referentes que encontraron al revisar las investigaciones que había sobre este tema y en las que se ha comprobado que al incluir los residuos de ropa se ayudaría a recuperar las propiedades mecánicas que pierde el plástico con el paso del tiempo y la exposición a la radiación solar.
Le sugerimos: Crisis mundial por la basura: solo el 16% de los desechos son reciclados
En vista de que el objetivo de este grupo también consistía reducir el impacto ambiental de la industria textil a través del reciclaje, los jurados del TPI eligieron este proyecto como uno de los ganadores en la final del taller, al determinar la viabilidad de la iniciativa, adelantar el análisis de costos y las pruebas de resistencia, densidad y alargamiento del producto.  
Los creadores de esta iniciativa fueron unos de los ganadores del Taller de Proyectos Interdisciplinarios. Foto: Brandon Pinto /Unimedios.
“No había pensado en el tema textil, yo creo que sí hay un impacto oculto que yo no conocía respecto al desperdicio de textiles, por eso me parece diferencial, y por la proyección industrial me parece que puede ser muy buen negocio”, comentó Carlos Eduardo Dávila, de Cafam.
La idea de los estudiantes es seguir fortaleciendo este proyecto de emprendimiento. “Hubo interés por parte de algunos profesores que formaron parte del jurado, se mostraron interesados en intervenir más en el tema porque puede generar empresa”, manifestó Juan Sebastián Torres, estudiante de Ingeniería Mecánica. 
*Con información de la Agencia de Noticias de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Unimedios). 

                Somos una agencia de arreglos de ropa profesionales que está innovando este negocio.
Con los años de experiencia hemos descubierto las frustraciones que tienen que experimentar los clientes cuando recurren a este servicio encontrándose con sorpresas que hemos eliminado por completo con nuestro servicio a domicilio para entrega inmediata; un servicio que hará más fácil la vida de nuestros clientes.               Se acabaron las molestias de ir a la sastrería del barrio y siempre encuentres cerrado.         Se acabó el incumplimiento en las entregas de tus prendas y vestidos porque el trabajo es inmediato.           ¡Nunca más! Somos sastres y modistas altamente calificados para hacer el trabajo rápido y bien hecho frente a tus ojos.         Sabemos que no quieres esperar tanto, por eso solo necesitamos entre 15 a 20 minutos para entregarte tu prenda o vestido como la quieres.          

South America

Colombia

Bogotá

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A clothing repair and alterations company based in Bogotá, Colombia, founded in 2017.

Todo Arreglos

<p>Based in Bogotá, Todo Arreglos brings clothing repair and alteration services to home.</p>