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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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Starter Kit collection

Business case

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

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

Providing products through sharing between consumers, customers, etc.

Peer to peer sharing

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

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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             Vintage Zwarte maxi rok - split 10 Swaps  
             Jungle jumpsuit - groen 10 Swaps  
             Mexx Zwarte korset jurk - gaas 20 Swaps  
             Zara Krijtstreep pak - zwart 20 Swaps  
             Bloemenprint maxi-jurk - bruin 20 Swaps  
             Vintage linnen blazer - geel 20 Swaps  
             French Connection Chique lange jas - donker blauw rits 50 Swaps  
             Vilten opbergtasje  
             Vlinderprint jurk - zwart 5 Swaps  
                  
             Vilten opbergtasje  
             Vintage Zwarte maxi rok - split 10 Swaps  
             Mexx Zwarte korset jurk - gaas 20 Swaps  
             Vlinderprint jurk - zwart 5 Swaps  
             Vintage pastel blouse - groen 10 Swaps  
             Vintage linnen blazer - rood 10 Swaps  
             Vintage linnen blazer - geel 20 Swaps  
             Leren rok - kaki elastieke band 5 Swaps  
             Zara Leren rok - bordeaux elastieke band 5 Swaps  
     

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Amsterdam

Gemeente Rotterdam

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The Swapshop is a social start-up with a mission to extend the life of clothing and other fashion items and make swapping the norm.

The Swap Shop 

The Swapshop is a social start-up with the mission to extend the life of clothing and other fashion items and make swapping the norm. Their initiative started in 2018, with the aim of making fashion consumption more sustainable and circular.&nbsp;They organized small swap events under the name&nbsp;Awearness Kollektif.&nbsp;Their events became bigger and better known with partners such as BlueCity010 and Motel Mozaique.&nbsp; Since they knew that events were not going to change the linear system of consumption in the clothing industry, on August 31, 2019 they opened the first physical swap shop in the center of Rotterdam, and later Amsterdam. Customers can bring clothes and gain 'store credit' currency called 'Swaps' to later redeem other items in the store.

The Swap Shop: A social start-up on a mission to extend the life of clothing

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

Give products and parts another life after their end-of-use

Maximise lifetime of products after use

Marketplaces or services that enable the second hand sale of products

Second-hand sale, distribution

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

Swapshop is a resale store, supported by the city, that gives discounts in exchange for each used dress or shirt you bring in. As a last resort, you can drop it off for recycling at a network of bins throughout the city.In 2023, a new recycling facility is expected to open that can <a href="https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/business/news-and-insights/news/2022/amsterdam-to-get-first-fully-circular-textile-factory" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">turn old clothes into yarn that can be locally manufactured into clothing</a>. Swapshop, the clothing resale shop, started hosting clothing swaps in 2018 before opening its store. “When we started, circularity was still low on the agenda. We had to shout to be heard,” says cofounder and owner Monique Drent. “When they started to realize we have a problem, and they started to look for solutions, we were there.” The city is also helping the business take the next step; it recently gave the store a grant to start a product line using materials recycled from the clothes that it can’t resell.