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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

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 social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social 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

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

Fashion and Textiles

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

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

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

Rethink the business model

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

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

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

'Mobilise' sets the direction of and builds momentum towards long-term change, while also determining how this direction is determined and governed.

Mobilise

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

Regenerate strategies phase out hazardous or toxic materials and processes and substitute them with regenerative biomass resources. A circular economy aims to mimic natural cycles—by shifting to more regenerative farming practices, for example—while also maximising the share of circular biomass that enters the economy. Regeneration can happen both at the systems level (by designing regenerative processes) as well as at the product level (by switching synthetic to organic fertilisers, for example).

Regenerate

CE Materials

Impacts

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Industries

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Materials

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

Nace Sectors

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

Topics

Urban Opportunities

Whilst no two countries are the same, there are still obvious similarities between some of them, with discernible development patterns and parallels in evidence. Common problems and shared solutions help place unique country identities and individual issues in context.

Whilst this classification is far from clear-cut and exhibits some overlap, it does underline how the discourse on transitioning to a circular economy needs to account for both differences and commonalities, if we are to arrive at a more strategic and instructive analysis. It also allows to highlight a set of key themes that are likely to be central to the countries that fall under the respective profiles. 

Country profiles (Build, Grow, Shift)

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A framework to distinguish between different country profiles and their circular transition needs.

Browse case studies by type of implementing stakeholder.

Implementing stakeholders

80+ circular strategies for product development 
organised hierarchically into three tiers
with tier 1 and tier 2 based on the Key Elements Framework

DISRUPT

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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The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

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An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

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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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 KeringSustainabilitySafeguarding the planetRegenerative Fund for Nature    Sustainability  From cotton to wool, or leather to cashmere, most clothing begins life as a raw material on a farm or rangeland. For this reason, the future of the fashion industry is inextricably linked with the future of agriculture. Though agriculture is currently a major driver of biodiversity loss and climate change, it can be transformed from a ‘problem’ to a powerful nature-based solution. To achieve this transformation, Kering and Conservation International launched the Regenerative Fund for Nature, with the aim of transforming 1,000,000 hectares of crop and rangelands into regenerative agricultural spaces over the next five years.        
  Regenerative agricultural practices have been proven to deliver the outcomes we need for the climate, nature and livelihoods. However, much more support is needed to drive this transition. This includes helping farmers and producers to make the change by introducing the right market mechanisms to scale up regenerative agricultural production. The Regenerative Fund for Nature was created to meet this need. The Fund Launched in January 2021, the Regenerative Fund for Nature is consistent with Kering’s Biodiversity strategy published last year. It specifically illustrates the Group’s commitment to go one step even further in its efforts to preserve biodiversity, which is inextricably linked to the future of the luxury industry, but above all, that of our planet. On the one hand, the Fund seeks to show how nature, climate change and livelihoods can change for the better, thanks to transforming agricultural practices. On the other, it strives to support new responsible supply chain and sourcing approaches in the fashion industry by upscaling quality and quantity. Lastly, the Fund ultimately aims to provide concrete outcomes in terms of biodiversity and climate change, while at the same time supporting animal welfare and rural livelihoods by deploying the latest scientific tools and methods.   In practice, the Fund will provide grants to farming groups, project leaders, NGOs and other stakeholders who are ready to test, prove and scale regenerative practices, which focus on working in harmony with natural systems.   For more information about eligibility, the application process, the funding cycle, and much more, please see our FAQ.   All projects need to be implemented in one or more of the priority countries listed by the Fund. These countries were selected after science-based analyses conducted by Conservation International that assessed the importance of the material for fashion supply chains, the feasibility of implementing projects and the potential positive outcomes for biodiversity (species and ecosystems), climate change and the soil.  Here is the list of countries where projects have been selected:  

   
   
                            
                                                                                                                                                                               Argentina France India Mongolia South Africa Spain  


 Discover the selected projects for 2021   Regenerative Fund for Nature: key figures     1,000,000 hectares The Fund will transform 1 million hectares into regenerative agricultural spaces by 2025       4 materials The Fund will focus on leather, cotton, wool and cashmere       7 countries The Fund has selected 7 projects in 7 different countries (see map)       €100K - €500K Expected total grant size for 1-3 years      Robert Rodale, son of American organic pioneer J.I. Rodale, used the term ‘regenerative’ to distinguish a kind of farming that goes beyond simply ‘sustainable’ regenerative agriculture:  “…takes advantage of the natural tendencies of ecosystems to regenerate when disturbed. In that primary sense it is distinguished from other types of agriculture that either oppose or ignore the value of those natural tendencies.”  While the way regenerative agriculture is practiced may vary depending on the region, soils, and type of crops or livestock, there are some key principles and outcomes that we use to define regenerative:            Increasing carbon in the soil and other improvements of soil health (e.g. capacity to retain water)            Protecting & restoring native habitat & biodiversity            Eliminating the use of unnecessary, synthetic harmful chemical inputs            Supporting farmer livelihoods              Regenerative agriculture both encompasses traditional, proven practices as well as innovation in management, measurement and practice. It is an alternative way of raising crops and animals that, by working with natural systems, ensures the long-term viability and resilience of the land to continue to provide for generations to come. The focus on restoration and regeneration of nature is about ‘doing more good’ through agriculture, rather than just ‘less bad’.   Discover what this means in cotton, leather, wool and cashmere   Conservation International is working to help introduce a new era in which regenerative agriculture is a global solution for people, nature and climate. By combining science, field programs, corporate partnerships and government engagement, Conservation International is aligning stakeholders around a common vision for regenerative agriculture, developing multi-stakeholder collaborations that incentivize and deliver on its promise.  Learn More About Conservation International  

             Image: an organic cotton farm at Magan Sangrahalaya Samiti (MSS)    At Ecosophy, we’re passionate about responsible textile production. We choose to work with growers and producers who adopt organic and sustainable practices as well as ensuring fair and safe conditions for their workers. Recently, we’ve been finding out more about regenerative agriculture and its potential to transform our fibre systems, rebuilding soil and water health to leave the environment in a better state for future generations. What is Regenerative Agriculture? Regenerative agriculture is a term used to describe a collection of farming and grazing practices that help to repair environmental damage and rebuild healthy ecosystems. These include practices that help increase biodiversity, improve soil fertility, reduce soil erosion, sequester carbon and generally offer a more sustainable way of producing our food and fibres. Whilst there is an overlap between organic farming and regenerative farming, the key difference is that with regenerative agriculture, producers are not just sustaining the land so that it can continue to be used in the future. They are actively improving what is there and leaving it better for the next generation.          Image: organic farmers linked to MSS with their cows, which play an important role in regenerative agriculture    Plant fibres like cotton, hemp and linen can all be grown regeneratively in ways that maximise the drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere and restore soil and water health. Conventionally grown cotton is the most pesticide-intensive crop in the world and the pollution caused by these pesticides affects thousands of cotton farmers and their families each year. It’s also grown with huge amounts of irrigation, accounting for 69% of the water footprint of all textile fibres. These problems have led to an increasing number of farmers adopting an organic approach, avoiding chemical inputs and using natural methods of pest control. In addition to the benefits of organic cotton, regenerative cotton focuses on rebuilding the health of the soil. Regenerative techniques include reducing tillage (which reduces disturbance to soil ecosystems), planting multi-species cover crops to enrich and improve the soil, and ‘alley cropping,’ a technique where organic cotton is grown between rows of trees like mulberry and fig. The organic cotton farmers we source from in India, such as Chetna Organic and Magan Sangrahalaya Samiti (MSS), use many of these techniques. Regenerative farming often involves the use of indigenous plant varieties that offer unique advantages over more modern varieties. Khamir’s Kala Cotton Initiative uses Kala cotton, a variety that’s indigenous to the Kachchh region of Gujarat. It’s a drought-resistant, purely rainfed crop so it doesn’t need irrigating. It’s also highly disease and pest resistant and can be grown without any chemicals. Kahmir was one of the first producers we visited when setting up Ecosophy and we hope to introduce some new textiles made using their Kala cotton soon.Like plant fibres, wool can be regenerative if the animals are grazed on landscapes where the health of the pasture is restored through building soil fertility and the use of prescribed grazing systems to enhance biodiversity. Fibreshed is a US-based organisation championing regenerative textile systems with a particular focus on wool. Their work demonstrates how regenerative wool can be created alongside regenerative plant fibre systems to produce Climate Beneficial™ ethical wool. The Fibreshed ethos considers the whole system in which fibres, textiles and garments are produced, worn and disposed of. They now have several members in the UK, forming a South West England Fibreshed, with plans to expand to other areas.The textile dyeing and finishing industry is one of the most chemically intensive on the planet and the number one polluter of water after agriculture. It's important to address this when looking at the overall sustainability of textile systems. We work with natural dyes where possible and these can be regenerative or not depending on how they are grown and processed. Natural indigo - a deep blue colour from the Indigofera plant - can be highly regenerative. It’s one of the most practical and durable natural dyes and unlike most natural dyes, it can be used without a mordant to fix the dye to the textile fibres. As a legume, indigo is a nitrogen-fixing plant that naturally enhances soil fertility. It grows easily without any chemicals or irrigation and is a very useful plant for restoring dry or nutrient-depleted soils. It’s also low-waste. After harvesting, the plant stems can be used as firewood. And once the pigment has been extracted, the plant residue can be composted and used as fertiliser, with the remaining water from the dyeing process used to irrigate crops. Nijera Village & Cottage Industries in Bangladesh is one of the textile producers we work with who grow and process indigo regeneratively. They’re a social enterprise consisting of natural indigo farmers, dyers and artisans trained in the art of shibori (a resist-dyeing technique).          Image: shawl dyed in natural indigo at Nijera Village and Cottage Industries    Regenerative fibre and dye systems offer plenty of social as well as environmental benefits. Many of the producers we work with focus on the regeneration of communities as well as the environment. Their work encourages close local links between actors at different stages of the textile supply chain, helping to create a diversity of local jobs and supporting a healthy local economy. Nijera Village and Cottage Industries have achieved this by setting up a social enterprise to bring farmers, dyers and artisans together. Magan Sangrahalaya Samiti (MSS), an NGO in central India that produces the cotton in our indigo and myrobolan cushion covers, is innovating a range of small-scale technologies and processes, such as solar-powered spinning machines and small-scale ginning operations, to create local jobs and rebalance the power relationship between mills and farmers, as well as helping local farmers adopt a regenerative approach to cotton. We’re greatly inspired by these local regenerative textile economies and how environmental repair is being carried out in tandem with rebuilding communities and creating sustainable livelihoods. Restoring soil and water health is crucial for the overall health of our planet and regenerative agriculture offers a way to do this whilst continuing to produce the food and fibres that we need. It’s an exciting time for sustainable textiles and we hope you’ll join us as we continue to explore the people and projects involved in the regenerative textile movement. Words: Jenny BellImages: Ecosophy    

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Fibershed

7WEAVES 

A global Luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods, Jewelry, and Watches: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, Dodo, Qeelin, Ulysse Nardin, Girard-Perregaux, and Kering Eyewear.
Kering promotes modern, authentic, and genuine Luxury that enables everyone to express his or her unique personality. A Luxury based on creative risk-taking and sincerity that inspires dreams and emotions. This conception of Luxury is at the heart of our business model and organization. By placing creativity at the heart of its strategy, Kering enables its Houses to set new limits in terms of their creative expression while crafting tomorrow's Luxury in a sustainable and responsible way.

Kering

Khamir

What do clothes have to do with agriculture? The raw material for textiles from cotton to wool or silk to cashmere, all comes from farms, rangelands or forests. The current agricultural practices of monocrop farming, usage of chemicals and pesticides, clearance of forest land for agriculture, together contribute to biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative agricultural practices help increase biodiversity, improve soil fertility, reduce soil erosion, sequester carbon and generally offer a more sustainable way of producing our food and fibres. Many organisations worldwide are returning back to the traditional agricultural practices for developing regenerative systems in the textile value chain.

Regenerative Farming - A new approach for sustainable and circular textiles

How can we learn from the indigenous...How can indigenous communities help to achieve full circularityWhy are they an important part to achieve the goal of circular textiles and how can they make fashion make the planet green instead of polluting it.In her book Lo-Tek - Julia Watson, a designer and an environmentalist, has very strongly emphasised how indigenous communities have been pioneers of technologies and innovation. They have learnt ways of living with nature, preserving it and ethically simultaneously consuming it. Years of experience have made them to create systems."There are so many examples," she told Dezeen.&nbsp;"They have increased biodiversity, they're producing food, they're flood mitigating, they're resilient in terms of foreshore conditions, they're cleaning water, they're carbon sequestering." They have used waste and byproducts of their ecology system to develop such textile systems which follow the soil to soil economy and are utilised until it reaches a stage where it cant be upcycled or recycled further. They are the masters of extending the lifetime of a product and using it until they cant think of any other use. They use the neglected silk cocoon to make yarn, cotton was grown as a crop to replenish the soil which they started using to make yarn. For dyeing, they used the local plants and natural materials fallen around them to color. Because of their belief, that they owe everything to nature and worshipped nature, they utilised its resources respectfully...not more than what is needed. if they take, they have to give it back.Similarly, they have developed circular systems for their clothing where natural waste is used for their clothing. They have integrated their culture and traditions in their textiles as a means of transfer of knowledge.Each region have their own textile techniques or traditions informing that a similar definition of circular design wont work in all the geographical areas.For example in hilly areas, there is backstrap loom as the conditions dont allow for a frame loom for weaving. They adjusted their system according to natural conditions... but after industrial revolution we have refused to adjust and changed natural conditions to fit our requirements, we have changed landscapes for our requirement. Example of cotton, the way something is processed or developed makes the difference...design and product process is crititcal.

Linear to Circular Economy : Solutions found in the ancestral indigenous technologies innovated  around the world

Artisanal Fashion is not always sustainable and circular

Of particular relevance was the success story of Bali’s indigo community, which has, under the leadership of a charismatic community leader, become a sustainable ecosystem of knowledge, heritage and creative economy that has contributed to the landscape’s regeneration.