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This collection is part of Footprints Africa's work to build a comprehensive database of circular economy initiatives in Africa. 

This is a result of the collaboration with the <a href="https://www.acen.africa" target="_blank">African Circular Economy Network (ACEN)</a>, as part of the programme to support the circular economy transition in Africa. Footprints Africa's vision is that businesses can be a force for good at scale. Their mission is to advance sustainable, scalable and inclusive approaches to development of local African economies. Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, such as those inspired by the circular economy, to address the challenges of growth and create jobs. 

This open-source dataset features well over 500 cases and 200 examples of policies and laws and intent to collect inspiring examples of initiatives from across Africa, in order to inform the global dialogue, which is largely focused on the European and American context. 

To learn more about Africa's initiatives and content to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, visit https://www.footprintsafrica.co/

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Footprints Africa

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Business case

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

Jobs

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

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

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

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

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

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South Africa

Africa

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Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, address the challenges of growth and create jobs, using supply chains as a tool for development. 

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The vision of the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) is to build a restorative African economy that generates well-being and prosperity inclusive of all its people through new forms of economic production and consumption which maintain and regenerate its environmental resources.

African Circular Economy Network

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

The Clothing Bank

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

The Clothing Bank - Entrepreneur training with clothing excess

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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Article / Report

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

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

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)

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

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

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

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GreenCape

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

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.