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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

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Efficiency gains on operations or transactions either through cultural or technological shifts

Productivity

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 textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Designing products so they produce as little waste as possible during production

Design for minimal waste

Designing products to remove any barriers to recycling and enable easy recyclability

Design for recycling

Designing products to resist damage and wear, and serve a long and useful life.

Design for physical durability

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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Giotex, the largest spinner of recycled cotton/polyester pre-dyed fibers and blends in the Americas, will sell recycled cotton blended yarn embedded with the AWARE™ tracer particles starting from November 2020.Thanks to this collaboration, the AWARE™ integrity solution  is now also available in North and South America. Brands and retailers from the USA, producing their products locally, can now also benefit from 100% traceable recycled cotton yarn. Recycled cotton is the most important yarn for sustainable future. Made from post industrial cutting clips or post consumer garments, 1 kilo recycled cotton saves almost 10,000 litres of water. And because we don’t have to cultivate new cotton fields, we save unspoiled nature (1,000 kg of recycled cotton saves 5,000 m2 land).“Today, nothing is more import to manufacturing than sustainable practices and radical transparency. AWARE™ has joined advanced tagging technology to blockchain transparency. We simply had to be included in The Movement”, says Steven Usdan, Co-Founder of Giotex."We are extremely happy with this collaboration", says Feico van der Veen, Founder of The Movement. "We believe that genuine traceable recycled cotton yarn should be available from all important production areas in the world, to avoid unneeded shipments of materials. We have licensed spinners in Asia and Europe. With Giotex we have the best partner possible in the Americas."It’s very difficult to prove that final garment is really made of genuine recycled materials. Certification data should reflect reality, but sometimes reality changes and the data stays the same. Greenwashing is a hidden risk. AWARE™ developed a rock solid technology that can truly verify the authenticity of recycled materials, by using tracer- and blockchain technology. AWARE™ is fully reliable, avoids greenwashing and is easy to use.ABOUT GIOTEX:Giotex is the largest certified recycler of textile waste-to-yarn in North and South America. Giotex recovers fiber from post-industrial and post-consumer textiles and spins a full range of dyed cottonblends for leading mills and brands.Giotex is the first to achieve Global Recycling Standard certification for yarn in North America..ABOUT THE MOVEMENT:The Dutch company The Movement is offering innovative sustainable fiber- and yarn solutions for the textile industry. Branded, trusted and always 100% traceable. We make sustainable alternatives available for the textile industry. We provide seamless supply chain integrations. We understand sustainability and how to implement. Our sustainable brands are: Polylana® Fiber and AWARE™.

New York

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Giotex USA

<p>The manufacturer of premium yarns based in the US called Giotex, has developed the Giotex™, a high-quality yarn that can be used to produce fabrics. The company developed a technical process to convert&nbsp; virgin cotton fabric waste from apparel factories into usable 100% cotton fibre that can then be re-spun into yarn in a cost-efficient process that saves energy, land, water and other resources. Since its introduction in 1997, due to its quality and environmental benefits, major manufacturers and retailers have used the yarn in their productions making Giotex the largest spinner of recycled cotton/polyester pre-dyed fibers and blends in the Americas. In late 2020, the company signed an agreement with AWARE™, an advanced tagging technology that incorporates AWARE™ tracer particles making recycled cotton yarn 100% traceable.</p>