thumbnail_WCTD2022_campaignlogo.jpg

WCTD2022_campaignlogo.jpg

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

large_WCTD background.png

medium_WCTD background.png

small_WCTD background.png

thumbnail_WCTD background.png

WCTD background.png

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

Revenue Potential

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

Innovation

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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)

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

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

Use waste as a resource

Use digital, online platforms and technologies that provide insights to track and optimise resource use, strengthen connections between supply chain actors, and enable the implementation of circular models



Incorporate digital technology

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

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Employ technologies to gather and analyse data to provide insights on resource use

Data and insights

Employ online platforms to connect and improve information sharing between stakeholders

Digital platforms

Transforming waste products, materials for reuse within the same industry

Closed loop upcycling

Connecting products and services into the internet of things to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Internet enabled, connected operations

Developing or utilising online platforms to enable circular economy opportunities through information, product or service offering

Online platforms

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

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

small_climate-4803653_640.jpg

thumbnail_climate-4803653_640.jpg

climate-4803653_640.jpg

Industries

small_coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

thumbnail_coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

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

large_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

medium_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

small_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

thumbnail_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

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

thumbnail_wctd.jpg

wctd.jpg

![Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png](https://goldilocks-images.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen_Shot_2024_10_21_at_16_53_12_12858da6aa.png)

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

medium_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

Every year, unused fabric costs the fashion industry about $120 billion, according to analysis by online deadstock marketplace Queen of Raw. For some large companies, that can amount to a 15 percent hit to the bottom line on an annual basis.Some fashion companies are discovering there’s value embedded in their waste.Next month, TheRealReal is launching the ReCollection programme, a series of collections “upcycled” from old garments, the resale site’s first time turning its hand to developing its own line. Its first drop of 50 pieces will be made up of donated items from brands including Balenciaga, Dries Van Noten and Stella McCartney.Meanwhile, LVMH is quietly preparing to launch an e-commerce marketplace for its brands’ unused fabric and leather.Young designers have long treasure hunted discarded fabrics, viewing the castoffs, known in the industry as deadstock, as a cheap supply of high-quality material. In recent years, some brands have built entire businesses out of upcycled items. Reformation started out sourcing deadstock from Los Angeles factories, though it relies more on new fabric now that sales have soared past $100 million annually. Elsewhere, brands like Eileen Fisher and Patagonia have launched re-crafted clothing, helping burnish their green images. And at the luxury end of the market, brands like Bode have turned the use of vintage and deadstock fabrics into a point of value and differentiation.Some fashion companies are discovering there’s value embedded in their waste.Many experts say the trend is only getting started. Consumer demand for sustainably made clothing continued to grow during the pandemic. And there’s no shortage of supply: countless brands are sitting on clothes that went unsold during lockdown, and factories have stockrooms full of fabric meant for long-cancelled orders. Some companies may have no choice but to explore upcycling; this year, France may begin enforcing a law banning brands from burning or dumping unsold clothing.Fashion’s biggest brands have historically displayed little interest in deadstock, but behind the scenes many have been quietly exploring this new market. Many already donate large volumes of fabric to fashion schools and have experimented with resale.“For so long this waste and unused inventory has been going on and nobody was paying attention to it,” said Stephanie Benedetto, chief executive and co-founder of Queen of Raw. “It doesn’t make sense for people and planet, but it sure as hell doesn’t make sense for profit.”The number of transactions taking place on the marketplace has grown nearly 125 percent quarter-over-quarter throughout the pandemic. When the business launched in 2018, brands would primarily engage through sustainability departments, but now marketing, finance and strategy teams are all just as likely to want to learn more about the services Queen of Raw can provide, Benedetto said.Last year, LVMH named the company a finalist for its innovation award. This year, it’s launching its own resale platform.Meanwhile, The RealReal, which helped create a mainstream market for luxury resale, is eyeing the opportunities presented by bespoke collections from upcycled garments. While its first collection will feature donated items, its second drop launching later in the month will be an in-house range of cashmere loungewear. The upcycled garments will include no virgin materials, zero-waste production and be manufactured in America for a fair wage, according to The RealReal.The concept was already under discussion before the pandemic hit, but the crisis helped expand its ambition, said Allison Sommer, senior director of strategic initiatives at The RealReal.“This is just the beginning,” she said. “We saw the disrupted inventory flows that resulted in even more deadstock... that is what showed us this doesn’t need to be a single collection. This should be ongoing.”Editor’s Note: This article was revised on 26 March 2021. A previous version of this article stated that The RealReal’s second range under its ReCollection programme will be made in collaboration with Atelier & Repairs. This is incorrect. Atelier & Repairs is not involves in this second collection.Related Articles:How Designers Build Big Businesses Out of Old FabricThe Waste Opportunity: How Fashion Could Turn Trash to TreasureLuxury Brands Burn Unsold Goods. What Should They do Instead?

Stephanie BenedettoQueen of Raw
You want to reduce pollutants, the textile industry is a good place to start. Fabric production not only creates a lot of pollution, but also wastes enormous amounts of water. And, according to some estimates, $120 billion a year of unused material is thrown into landfills, burned up or just laid to rest in warehouses. Plus the waste problem happens everywhere from mills to retailers.  That’s where Queen of Raw comes in. Founder Stephanie Benedetto started the company to build an online marketplace that matches buyers and sellers of unused fabric. More recently, she took the platform’s blockchain and machine learning-based technology engine and built MateriaMX, a service for enterprise sellers aimed at helping them find waste in their supply chains in real-time. Then they can automatically send inventory to the Queen of Raw marketplace. Thus, instead of depositing the material in a landfill, they can resell it and turn the stuff into profits. It’s a particularly pressing matter for companies that have signed commitments to reduce their waste by 2030. “Companies can identify waste in their supply chains they may not even know they had,” says Benedetto.  Queen of Raw, of course, isn’t the only impact startup using state-of-the-art technology, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, to form the backbone of their businesses. Blockchain technology, often described as a distributed digital ledger, creates time-stamped, tamper-proof records. Though most of the buzz about it has focused on cryptocurrency, its signature ability to build users’ trust in the security and veracity of documents on the blockchain also lends itself to many other uses.  A Return to Her Roots
Benedetto was working as a corporate lawyer during the 2008 market meltdown. That financial catastrophe got her thinking about doing something more meaningful and going back to her roots. At the end of the 19th century, her grandfather, an immigrant who settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, started repurposing unused fabrics, turning them into other garments. Benedetto decided to build a company that could accomplish something similar—repurpose material and turn it into something useful—but employ current technology to do so. 
Her first move was in 2012, when she started Paper No. 9, a company that made a sustainable alternative to leather. Then she got the idea for Queen of Raw. The online platform would use blockchain and machine learning to find and track excess fabric— post-consumer waste, fabric on rolls, you name it—and then match it to factories, retailers, designers and other buyers looking for that material. She co-founded the business in 2014, selling the excess Paper No. 9 fabric on the platform. Blockchain for Sellers’ Supply Chains
Then something happened. Benedetto started hearing from sellers that they weren’t exactly sure just how much unused fabric they had and where it was coming from. Also they didn’t know how to add the inventory to the Queen of Raw marketplace easily, since many were handling that task manually, working from Excel spreadsheets.  She realized she could not only help, but use her technology engine to build a supply-chain management service. So last year, she started MateriaMX (short for Material Exchange) to do that, with plans to launch officially this year. Basically, through MateriaMX, monthly subscribers can map, identify, measure and trace waste throughout their supply chains in real-time, ultimately allowing them to minimize their excess fabric, water and other waste streams. In addition, that unused material can be automatically added to the Queen of Raw marketplace. Plus, over time, with more data, the intelligent system will be able to analyze where customers might find waste streams, plus provide reports on the amount of water, toxins and other areas they’ve saved.   As for funding, Benedetto bootstrapped at first. Then in 2018, she went through a Techstars accelerator and won a WeWork Creator Award for $360,000. Last September, the company was one of the winners of MIT Solve’s Circular Economy Challenge, receiving a $10,000 grant, along with access to advisors, MIT facilities, and other benefits.
According to Benedetto, Queen of Raw has over 100,000 users and has saved over 1 billion gallons of water in just the last quarter. 

Resale companies that enable consumers to offload unwanted clothing are booming, thanks to technology that makes it easy for consumers to buy and sell items. Now, entrepreneurs are hoping to do the same thing for materials that didn’t get made into clothes at all.Startups have sprung up to make it easier for retailers to buy and sell deadstock fabric or materials that brands own but never used and don’t want. Queen of Raw, a three-year-old marketplace with 325,000 buyers and sellers globally, enables users to list, sell and buy deadstock materials. To date, it’s worked with companies, including LVMH, Cartier and H&M. It doesn’t hold inventory, but rather is a tech marketplace in the vein of Poshmark or Ebay, and takes an undisclosed portion of sales made through its marketplace (in addition to subscription fees for its proprietary software). Since the pandemic, interest has intensified as brands became aware that inventory might not match demand, according to the company.Competitors include AmoThreads, a deadstock material platform based in the UK, and Fabscrap, a New York non-profit, which uses fashion studios’ unwanted materials. Others have applied tech to re-using old materials in other ways: Designer Emily Bode, in working with Microsoft, developed a way to catalogue and identify old quilt patterns using computer vision. Queen of Raw’s goal is to achieve enough scale to build a network effect and automate as much as possible, says Queen of Raw co-founder and CEO Stephanie Benedetto.It’s received industry support to do so. In 2020, it was a recipient of the Cartier Women’s Initiative and a finalist for the LVMH Innovation Award. It has also raised $1.5 million from True Wealth Ventures and MIT Solve. In 2019, it was the first recipient of Thredup’s Circular Fashion Fund, a non-profit focused on supporting sustainable fashion efforts, because both Thredup and Queen of Raw share a mission that centres around keeping products out of landfill and encouraging circularity, says Erin Wallace, Thredup’s VP of integrated marketing.“We have all fundamentally changed the way in which we buy and produce. Fashion has the power to transport and inspire, but sometimes that is not enough.”Brands historically have stored or destroyed unused fabrics, but the concept of using deadstock materials has gotten increased attention as fashion works toward creating less waste. Less than 1 per cent of material used to make clothing is recycled, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. But connecting the dots between what a buyer will find valuable and what a seller would otherwise consider a business loss can be challenging, says Benedetto. Many brands who have created items out of deadstock do so from their own coffers.“We don’t tend to use a lot of deadstock because of the challenges of sourcing, and the commitments with lead times can be challenging,” says Dana Davis, VP of sustainability, product and business strategy at Mara Hoffman. Since the brand has begun transitioning to a direct-to-consumer model, there are more opportunities to use deadstock, she says. Already, Mara Hoffman has worked with Queen of Raw to list its deadstock for sale. As clothing resale platforms have found, sellers often become buyers: Mara Hoffman is now considering the technology for sourcing materials as well.

United States

large_blob

medium_blob

small_blob

thumbnail_blob

blob

Turning the world's pollution into profit! Because today $288 billion+ of excess inventory sits in warehouses collecting dust.
We started as a marketplace to monetize waste while keeping it in circulation. Now our excess inventory management software powers Fortune 500 so they can manage their circularity operations in a profitable and actionable way around the world.

Queen of Raw

<p>Queen of Raw is a fabric resale platform, generating revenue from deadstock fabrics by matching sellers with buyers. There is estimated to be $120 billion worth of excess fabric populating the world’s warehouses, which will likely either be incinerated or sent to landfill. Using cutting-edge technology, Queen of Raw has expanded into an Excess Inventory Management Solution through its Materia MX platform, helping businesses identify waste in real time and making intelligent predictions to minimise waste going forward.&nbsp;</p>