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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

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Designing to enable multiple uses and lifecycles of a product and its materials

Design for cyclability

Designing products that can easily breakdown and degrade in the environment

Design for bio-degradability

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

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

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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   The term ‘renewable synthetics’ is relatively new. What exactly does it mean?    Billy: We produce a bio-synthetic polymer, which means that we use monomers derived from renewable sources (biomass) and a synthetic process to make a material that looks, feels, and performs like traditional polyester (PET) and nylon.     Labelling a product as renewable can be confusing since oil derived synthetics like PET and nylon can be recycled, chemically or mechanically, thus making them ‘renewable’. But this misses the mark in terms of the impact that fossil fuel derived products have on the environment. Additionally, chemically or mechanically recycled PET and nylon still shed microfibres, and because PET and nylon are non-biodegradable, they will cause persistent microfibre pollution, and textile waste.     As a solution for microfibre pollution and textile waste, at Kintra, our material has an inherently compostable structure. This means that similar to a natural fibre, we have designed our material to safely return to the environment with no harm within wastewater treatment and industrial compost facilities.    How long do you think it will take for the fashion industry to be free from fossil fuels?    Alissa: We can look at the commitments that the world’s leading brands have made as an indicator for the future of the fashion industry. In looking at the 2021 results from the Textile Exchange Material Change Index, which is an annual survey of ~ 150 of apparel brands and retailers on their fibre purchasing practices and sustainability commitments, we see strong progress towards sustainable supply chains. 87 per cent of participating brands reported that they have plans to switch 100 per cent of at least one fibre category to a preferred fibre over a conventional, and 46 per cent of companies reported one or more circularity target. In looking at the polyester fibre category, 42 per cent of companies reported that they had publicly available commitments to switch to a sustainable polyester. Most companies have commitments to take these steps by 2025 or 2030. While scaling new technologies does take time, these commitments indicate that the demand is there and that brands, and their supply chain partners, are ready and willing to take the first steps to a cleaner, circular industry.    What is the difference between ‘sustainability’ and ‘circularity’? Which of the terms will you choose for your company and why?    Billy: Both terms get thrown around excessively in the fashion industry, but I don’t want to discourage people from thinking critically about these concepts. Ultimately the consumers, the brands, the material producers, and everyone in between needs to shift towards a ‘circular’ mentality when it comes to production and consumption. True sustainability or circularity can only be realised when everyone is on board and doing their part.     As a material producer, it is our role and responsibility to design our products to enable downstream circularity. We offer multiple pathways for circularity, as Kintra materials can fit chemical and mechanical recycling schemes, and industrial compost.    What is the story of Kintra Fibers? How has the journey been so far?    Billy: Kintra started as a concept four years ago and really started to take shape in the last few years. Our thesis is simple: design high performance materials using renewably sourced chemistry and reduce the environmental burden that traditional synthetic materials have placed on society. I think I can speak for the whole team by saying that the journey has been very gratifying so far. We are barely scratching the surface of what we are capable of, and we are extremely excited to grow.      Which all products do Kintra make? Where are they made?    Alissa: Kintra makes proprietary bio-based and compostable polyester resin and yarn. We make these materials in-house at our lab and have production partners who help us make larger quantities for customers.   DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com. 

 Kintra Fibers is a materials science company that makes compostable bio-synthetic resin and yarns for the apparel industry. By leveraging renewable, toxin-free chemistries and utilizing a cradle-to-cradle mindset during resin development, Kintra’s proprietary materials eliminate petrochemicals and microfiber pollution from the fashion industry.
Tell us a bit how your journey started.
The traditional synthetic materials that enable our outdoor adventures are the ones that pollute the very planet they help us explore. As a surfer and nano-engineer, CEO Billy McCall saw this as a materials design challenge. A fashion entrepreneur, COO Alissa Baier-Lentz had challenges sourcing a material that made no compromise between the planet, performance, and price. The two joined forces to launch Kintra Fibers, united on a personal and company mission to make materials for the apparel industry that enable the human connection to nature, without compromising nature.

What is your main focus at the moment?
In 2020, we closed our Seed Series, which has enabled us to grow our resin and multifilament yarn production to a level where we can interface directly with brand partners. We’re currently testing a variety of fabric constructions, dyeing and finishing processes, and are on track to launch our first yarns late 2021, early 2022.
What are the areas where improvement is most needed (either in your specific work, or in the sector as a whole)?
Petroleum-based synthetics represent 63% of total global fiber production, yet the 2019 Textile Exchange Material Change Insights Report shows that only 8% of brands know their supply chain to the chemical supplier level. The option of using recycled or bio-based versions of PET and nylon does not provide a truly circular solution as it does not solve the pervasive microfiber pollution issue. At Kintra, we hope to bring farm-to-fabric transparency to the synthetic textile value chain, with responsibility for microfiber-free usage and circular end-of-life options for our materials designed at the start.
What advice do you have for others?
In our discussions, we’ve learned that to be commercially viable, a material must perform just as well as, if not better, than traditional options. Innovators can’t ask brands to stop using traditional synthetics without providing a material that meets their design criteria. Second, innovators must be able to function as a direct drop-in to the traditional synthetic manufacturing supply chain, which will allow them to scale and offer the pricing that brands need. The burden of new infrastructure buildouts and process evolution cannot fall on the brand or their suppliers, or else existing synthetics will remain the only logical choice. Lastly, collaboration across the industry is the path forward to build the future we want to see.
What action do you take to combat climate change and its impacts?
According to the World Changing Markets ‘Fossil Fashion’ report published in February 2021, The production of synthetic fibers for the textile industry currently accounts for 1.35% of global oil consumption. This exceeds the annual oil consumption of Spain. Our mission is to eliminate this fashion industry dependency on fossil fuels. 

New York

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Kintra Fibers is a materials science company that makes compostable bio-synthetic resin and yarns for the apparel industry

Kintrafibers

<p>Kintra envisions a future for the fashion industry that is free from fossil fuels. Their inputs are derived from sugar instead of petroleum and designed the materials to fit industrial composting. Kintra materials are “leased” from nature to humans and formulated to return to the soil from which they originate. </p>

Kintra Fibers - 100% bio-based and biodegradable polyester

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)

                                        That’s why we’re setting a new standard.                                               “We are committed to bring visibility to an opaque part of the supply chain to help brands build a better, more sustainable future [...]. We’re thrilled to work with PANGAIA, a brand [...] committed to revolutionizing raw materials [seen] through their track record of working with eco-friendly innovations and processes.” 
— Alissa Baier-Lentz, Co-Founder and COO at Kintra Fibers
                                                            “We are excited to [...] bring real systemic change of material possibilities for the industry. We hope this material will become a model not just for PANGAIA, but for the industry at large. The Kintra fiber is a true embodiment of PANGAIA’s commitment to ‘high tech naturalism’, our material philosophy. Kintra’s breakthroughs in responsible, bio-based chemistry allow us to design for the performance and end-of-life of our garments from the molecule up.” (Forbes) 
— Amanda Parkes, Chief Innovation Officer at PANGAIA             “PANGAIA’s science-based standards for sustainability are unparalleled, and their commitment to the planet is visible in each step of their supply chain. We look forward to collaborating with the PANGAIA team and integrating our technology into their fabrics and garments. As a lifelong surfer, protecting the oceans is near and dear to me. By designing for the material end-of-life at its start, we offer the industry a solution for microfiber pollution, as well as the ability to fit with chemical and physical recycling systems.” (Forbes)
— Billy McCall, Co-Founder and CEO at Kintra Fibers                               PANGAIA x Kintra coming soon. For more information on biodegradable polyester, please contact us.        

                         We use inputs derived from sugar, instead of fossil fuels.           We design our materials to naturally degrade, keeping our oceans microfiber-free.           Our textiles fit physical and chemical recycling schemes, as well as industrial composting.           With a lower processing temperature, our materials require less energy in production.                                       Traditional fossil fuel-based synthetics represent two-thirds of the global fiber market. The production of petrochemical-based polyester (PET) alone accounts for more annual oil consumption than the entire country of Spain.* At Kintra, we envision a future for the fashion industry that is free from fossil fuels. Our inputs are derived from sugar instead of petroleum, and we design our materials to fit industrial composting. From our perspective, Kintra materials are “leased” from nature to humans and formulated to return to the soil from which they originate. *Changing Markets Foundation, Fossil Fashion Report         Each time you do laundry, millions of microfibers shed from your clothes. Microfibers from PET, nylon, and their recycled or bio-based versions get through wastewater facilities and pollute the oceans with tiny plastic particles, equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles per year.* At Kintra, we believe the planet deserves clean water. We’ve designed our materials to naturally degrade in the aerobic environment of a waste water treatment facility, keeping our oceans and soil clean.*Ellen MacArthur Foundation                                                 “Importantly, Kintra’s bespoke bio-synthetic design approach supports the circular approach of making materials fit for purpose but simultaneously designed for end of life.”           “Recycled plastics are not a silver bullet. They still shed microfibers and will likely ultimately end up in a landfill. Kintra’s solutions bridge the gap between the convenience of plastic and the environmental benefits of a biodegradable material.”           “Instead of petroleum, Kintra sources corn- and wheat-derived sugar to produce its resins and fibers, which undergo a melt-spinning process similar to polyester, nylon and other synthetic materials, providing a comparable look, feel and performance without contributing to the problem of microplastic pollution.”                                                         contact@kintrafibers.com63 Flushing AvenueBuilding 212, Suite 305Brooklyn, NY 11205

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PANGAIA is a direct-to-consumer materials science company who aspires to create essential products from innovative tech and bio-engineered materials, using as many sustainable and recyclable elements as possible.



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Pangaia

<p>Leading innovation company Pangaia joining forces with materials science company Kintra Fibers to help eliminate microplastic pollution by making polyester out of plants which can seamlessly biodegraded into the Earth post consumer usage.</p>