Business case

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

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

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

renderingThe Karoo Wilderness Center represents a significant shift in perspective and practice, sponsoring and provoking the learning, dialogue, and action necessary to redefine the consequence of human inhabitation on the land. The Center aims to re-establish the connection between the built and natural world as one that is mutually beneficial. Forming an exemplary model of sustainability, the Center generates its own energy, harvests its own water, processes its own waste, and provides thermal comfort using no municipal water or power. Learning from the continuum of life in the Karoo, the architecture of the Center provides a lasting connection to the landscape, and fosters an understanding of the interdependence of ecosystem health, and human well being.Architect: Field Architecture Location: Karoo, South Africa Project Team: Stan Field, Jess Field (Design Principals), Andy Lin, Erik Bloom, Chris Graesser Structural Engineers: Arup Conservation Management: Wilderness Foundation South Africa Environmental Impact Analysis: Integrated Environmental Management Project Area: 21,800 sqfThe landscape of the Karoo is elemental, in excess of nothing. From its inception, life in the Karoo has been defined by struggle. The minimal amount of rainfall has resulted in a parched condition in which each species of plant and animal has had to adapt, utilizing an economy of means in order to exist. Human inhabitation, a relatively recent phenomenon in the palpably long history of life here, has demanded more of the landscape than it can sustain, bringing it to the brink of irreversible depletion.Water, its absence as much as its presence, is a critical aspect of the formation and cognitive experience of the Karoo landscape. It is the relative scarcity of water that has determined the physical constitution and adaptations of the flora and fauna to the environment of the Karoo. Exemplified by the Aloe ferox – the predominant succulent found on the site and region – the structure and form of plant species is characterized primarily by strategies to collect and retain water and provide a shield from the sun. These qualities, which are result of opportunistic utility, make the Karoo what it is today, and are expressed through the architecture of the Center.planThe reconstitution of local materials through the architecture of the Center provokes an intimate experience of the immediate site. Concrete walls provide thermal mass, as well as critical earth retention. Formed using aggregate from the site itself, the concrete walls extend the colors and hues of the earth through the buildings, recalling the raw material of the ground. Constructed using shallow horizontal pours, each layer is expressed, creating strata that reveal the wall’s method of formation, echoing the geologic striations visible in the surrounding mountains. The curved undersides of the roofs are clad with thin wooden strands that bend to define the cupped form of the roof. Small gaps between each slat allow the imperfections and character of each piece to be celebrated, giving the effect of a hand crafted tapestry.renderingrendering

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Cape Town

GreenCape support businesses and investors in the green economy to remove barriers to establishment and growth. Furthermore, they support local, provincial and national government to build a resilient green economy.


GreenCape Sector Development Agency

Paper outlining the fate of construction and demolition waste in Cape Town, noting that the market for this waste is expanding rapidly.

Construction and Demolition Waste in the City of Cape Town

EI_CASE_STUDY_6_4_21.pdf

Article / Report

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Scalability

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)

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

Collection programmes that process products and parts for reuse or recycling within the same industry

Closed loop collection

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

Labelling

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policies

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The City of Helsinki’s Roadmap for Circular and Sharing Economy is one of the 147 actions in the Carbon-neutral Helsinki 2035 Action Plan.
The roadmap includes the following four focuses:
construction
procurement
green waste and
sharing economy and new business opportunities in the circular economy.
The goals for each focus are set until 2035, with interim goals and supporting practical actions for each one.
Reducing plastic consumption and increasing the use of recycled plastic are among the main topics of the roadmap.
This roadmap is the result of debates in workshops with experts from both inside and outside the City. A team of representatives of the City’s Environmental Services coordinated the work.


South Africa

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Established in 2009 to address widespread hunger in South Africa, FoodForward SA connects a world of excess to a world of need by recovering quality edible surplus food from the consumer goods supply chain and distributing it to community organisations that serve the poor. More than 80% of the food recovered is nutritious food

FoodForwardSA

Food rescue is one of many circularity tools that the food and beverage sector can use to alleviate pressures on the overall system. Not only is food rescue a societal obligation and an environmental imperative, it also makes business sense. Food rescue can reduce liabilities and strengthen competitiveness, which in turn contributes to building corporate and city resilience.However, a trusted intermediary is needed to coordinate food rescue, safely, reliably and at scale. Food Forward SA has fulfilled this role with proven impact in South Africa’s food supply chain.FoodForward SA connects a world of surplus to a world of need in a safe and cost effective manner. The Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) has leveraged its Section 18A status to provide food producers, brand owners and retailers an avenue to strengthen corporate social responsibility (CSR), reduce financial liability, reduce disposal overheads, and avoiding future disposal liabilities.

Surplus Food Recovery and Redistribution

Case-study_Life-beyond-sales-rack.pdf

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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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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

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Providing goods on the Internet, through mail order, or television, or providing goods in stores, including apparel, electronics, furniture, food and drug, etc.

Retail

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

Joint industry ventures, projects, pilots

Provide guidance or professional training to educate employees to use circular economy principles

Training on the circular economy

Metrics and indicators to measure progress

Raise awareness and run information campaigns about  strategies for and impacts of the circular economy in different contexts.

Communication and awareness

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

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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   GreenCape, supported by the City of Cape Town, has recently published a resilience case study, titled: Life beyond the sales rack, focusing on Clothing Bank, an intermediary established in 2010 in Cape Town, that collects excess clothing merchandise from retail partners.This case study, which focusses on textiles, is written to demonstrate how organisations that act as intermediaries can create economic opportunities that contribute to a circular economy in a developing country, such as South Africa.The case study discusses:
How waste can be used as a resource to drive economic growth and social upliftment.
How intermediaries can unlock circular economy opportunities,
How a circular economy can be emergent from addressing economic and social imperatives in a developing country context, and
How collaboration enables the organisation and partnering individuals to each havea sustainable business model.
The case study highlights key insights, challenge, solution, outcomes and impact.To download this case study, please click here.   

City of Cape Town

GreenCape

The Clothing Bank takes excess inventory and customer returns from retailers and runs practice-led entrepreneurship training for unemployed mothers.

The Clothing Bank

This case study, which focusses on textiles, is written to demonstrate how organisations that act as intermediaries can create economic opportunities that contribute to a circular economy in a developing country, such as South Africa. The case study discusses:- How waste can be used as a resource to drive economic growth and social upliftment,- How intermediaries can unlock circular economy opportunities,- How a circular economy can be emergent from addressing economic and social imperatives in a developing country context, and- How collaboration enables the organisation and partnering individuals to each have a sustainable business model.