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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

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

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

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

Engage and guide customers and consumers to ensure circular use of products

Customer / consumer collaboration

Engage with the local community where facilities or offices are located

Community collaboration

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

VISION:
People are valued and supported in an equitable, socially just and resilient society.

DETAIL:
Imagine a time when…people and communities are at the heart of any sustainable and circular system. The planet thrives, enabling us to survive with balance and abundance. People are no longer passive consumers, but proactive participants. The ‘makers’ who design, build, reprocess and recirculate products throughout the value chain are treated equally and are equitable partners in shaping and benefitting from the system. Textiles/garments can be produced and repurposed locally as well as centrally. A blend of craft methods alongside more automated production provides regionalised, multi-faceted perspectives and fulfilling livelihoods, be they high- or low-tech. Wealth gaps are minimised and dignity, equity, equality is a reality for all.

People and Society

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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Everyone’s talking about regenerative agriculture. Brands large and small—from Allbirds and Patagonia to Maggie Marilyn and Richard Malone—are partnering with regenerative cotton farms and peppering words like “soil health” and “carbon sequestration” into fashion week chats. Even Gucci’s CEO Marco Bizzarri mentioned regenerative agriculture in his Copenhagen Fashion Summit keynote, citing it as a priority in Gucci’s mission to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.Maybe fashion is rallying around regenerative ag, as it’s come to be known, because it’s so different from the other sustainability trends and buzzwords we’ve encountered. It has virtually no downsides or compromises, and it isn’t just “less bad” than conventional farming. It’s categorically good, and it’s good for every living thing involved: the farmers, the plants, the animals, the soil, the micro-organisms in the soil, and, eventually, the consumer. As Eileen Fisher put it in a recent Vogue interview: “This is one of the places where we can make a positive impact. Rather than just pollute less or do less harm, we can actually revive the earth through the process of making clothes.”In short, a farm becomes regenerative when its soil can “draw down” and absorb carbon, which regenerates the land and reduces the excess of carbon in the atmosphere. At present, the earth’s carbon balance is dangerously lopsided: The soil needs more of it (as carbon helps soil store water and feed plants), while the atmosphere has roughly 109 billion tons too much, which has led to global warming, rising sea levels, extreme weather events… the list goes on. Conventional agriculture methods like deep tilling, mono-cropping, and pesticides can lead to stripped, depleted soil, which can’t draw down carbon or support biodiversity. Regenerative farms, on the other hand, omit pesticides and strategically arrange plants so they can grow, flourish, and support each other: Cover crops are used to provide shade for smaller ones; animals may be brought in to graze and fertilize the soil; and “pollinator strips” are planted to attract bees and butterflies. It’s often said that regenerative farming mimics nature, with a vast array of species living as they normally would.

        We are building a seed-to-sew supply chain with regenerative agricultural practices at its heart, based in a village in rural India.  Read more →   
    Our open-source system is designed to be shared. We create collections for like-minded brands looking to adopt transparent practices into their own business.  Read more →      
                                         “Fashion’s sprawling global supply chain has made ‘traceability’ difficult, and it isn’t enough to rely on flimsy labels like ‘organic’ and ‘all-natural’. That’s where Nishanth Chopra comes in.” This Design Collective Is Helping Fashion Embrace Regenerative Agriculture | Vogue      This Design Collective Is Helping Fashion Embrace Regenerative Agriculture | Vogue This Design Collective Is Helping Fashion Embrace Regenerative Agriculture | Vogue        

            Building a seed-to-sew supply chain    Nishanth grew up in a ‘textile town’ in Tamil Nadu, India and saw firsthand how pollution and effluent waste from nearby textile mills and factories affected local communities and ecosystems. After a stint in the UK for university, he returned home with the goal to start his own fashion line, using organic cotton, linen, and other more sustainable materials. That’s when he watched Merku Thodarchi Malai, the Tamil movie that inspired him to pay even closer attention to his cotton supply chain.       Nishanth Chopra, Founder of Oshadi Collective    ‘It showed the story of farmers who are locked into this vicious circle of the hybrid GMO supply chains created during the green revolution in India. When I watched that movie, I kept thinking about every single step in the supply chain. I worried about buying cotton from a farm we didn’t know paid farmers fairly. That’s when I spoke to [Rebecca Burgess, founder of Fibershed] and asked her for support to start a farm. She gave me a grant and connected me with my first brand partner Christy Dawn so I could get a piece of previously inorganic land and start trying regenerative practices.’       Nishanth in the field ©Oshadi Collective           Cotton seed ©Oshadi Collective    Farmers trapped by private seed companies. ‘I’m sure you know that India has one of the highest rates of farmer suicides in the world. So basically the reason behind that is a farmer with a small piece of land goes to a company selling GMO seeds. The company will say, “don't buy native seeds, we can give you hybrid seeds which will give you five times more yield.” The results of those seeds in the first season are fantastic, the farmer might get 10x what they normally get.        Oshadi’s first farmers empowerment workshop, December 2020 ©Oshadi Collective    So, they use those seeds for a second season, but the soil has been depleted because everything has been extracted from it. So the farmers go back to the GMO seed company and ask what they can do. And the guy from the company's like, “we have this salt, or you know we have this chemical, which you can use.” So the farmers use those chemicals, and again the results are fantastic for a while. But then they start having problems with weeks so the farmers go back to the company again, and the company sells them this chemical called Roundup, which starts to act like a drug in that over time you need more and more of it to get the same results. Sometimes these companies provide these seeds and chemicals on credit with interest rates that compile over time — the expenses accumulate for the farmer, and can become impossible to pay off.’       Quality checks ©Oshadi Collective    Unfair market demands compromise certifications integrity.The fact that organic cotton that seemed to be readily available in Indian at unbelievably low prices made Nishanth question how sustainable that cotton really was. ‘Just 2% of the world's cotton is organic cotton.So I wondered, how can every mill in India have organic cotton when there's only supposed to be 2% organic cotton? I looked into it and realised a lot of it was fake. A farm could get a certificate for 500 acres of cotton, might farm organically for just 20 acres of that and farm everything else inorganically. It’s because the prices set by the system aren’t the right prices, aren’t fair prices.’       Farmer Kuppasamy holding earth worms at the regenerative cotton field shot by @AshishChandraStudio    Returning to regenerative practices. The practices Nishanth uses are regenerative, but they're not new. Rather, they’re inspired by traditional Indian farming techniques. ‘We’re going back to pre-green revolution practices. Traditional Indian farming is completely organic, completely sustainable. People knew about cover crops, people knew about trap crops, people knew about not using [chemicals], people knew about not filling stuff below the soil level, people knew about pollinated strips.        Key elements to regenerate the soil, as portrayed in Christy Dawn blog about the collaboration with Oshadi    They didn't know these terms but they knew it all had to be there for the farm to be right. We’re trying to find and use information from older generations who remember what it was like to farm without chemicals and insecticides. You go explore and get loads of information and start filtering through it to find the things that could work. It was difficult for us to figure out traditional farm set-ups and layouts, what they used back in the day. But we took it step by step and figured things out one at a time.’Letting practices set the price. ‘Just because the cotton is priced as $2 or $4 doesn’t mean the price is right. I thought, let's start farming and find out what the real price of the cotton is, and then we decide what we want to pay for the cotton, instead of letting the commodity market decide.’        Cotton pickers in Namma Erode City, Tamil Nadu, India ©Oshadi Collective    Building an entire supply chain. As a farming, processing, dyeing, and manufacturing operation that partners directly with brands and produces an own-label clothing line, Nishanth’s work spans the entire supply chain from farm to finished fashion product. ‘This season we are doing 28 acres of organic cotton for brands and for our own womenswear collection [Oshadi] and we are also growing five acres of indigo. We are looking to dye the cotton we are growing with dyes we grow on the same farm.’Greetings from: Erode, Tamil Nadu, IndiaThanks to Tamsin Blanchard of Fashion Revolution for introducing us to Nishanth’s Story   

Tamil Nadu

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Oshadi Collective

<p>Oshadi works with a collective of local farmers and artisans to make fashion that honours the hands of its makers and nurtures the lands where it is grown.</p><p>Their collections are sourced, spun, naturally dyed, woven, printed and sewn in the villages neighbouring their farm, so they can ensure every stage of production is sustainable and fair.</p>