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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

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

Jobs

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

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)

Producing and providing leisure and personal products and services for consumers, such as cleaning products, sports equipment and toys, personal and beauty care products, as well as domestic and personal services such as caretaking, cleaning, hairdressing and other beauty treatment, funeral and related activities

Personal Products and Services

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

Fashion and Textiles

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

Prioritise regenerative resources

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Using <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/raw-materials/specific-interest/critical_sv" target="_blank">materials that are not considered critical</a>.

Non-critical materials and inputs 

Research and facilitate new technological developments to aid the transition to a circular economy.

Research and Development

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

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

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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  Die Idee war geboren als Ann Cathrin beobachtete, dass ihre Mutter bei der Pflege der zwei langhaarigen Vierbeiner die ausgekämmte Unterwolle aufbewahrte, da sie “einfach zu schade zum wegschmeißen” war. Als nachhaltigkeits-orientierte Strickdesignerin fragte sie sich sofort ob man daraus kein Garn verspinnen könne und warum das wohl noch niemand gemacht habe.
Es ließ sich schnell herausfinden, dass das verspinnen von Hundewolle schon eine sehr lange und alte Tradition hat - warum aber macht das heutzutage niemand der breiten Masse zugänglich?
So begann die Reise der Recherche und des Netzwerk-Aufbaus. Als sie ein paar Monate später das erste Garn in den Händen hielt, wollte sie sicher zu stellen, dass sie nicht völlig mit ihrer Idee daneben lag und beriet sie sich mit Franziska, einer angehenden Textilingenieurin, und erzählte von der Idee der Umsetzung. Die zwei hatten über die Textil- und Nachhaltigkeitsszene in der digitalen Welt zueinander gefunden haben.
das Team
Dass die Idee alles andere als sinnlos war, zeigt vielleicht, dass Franziska inzwischen als Co-Founderin mit im Team ist. Im August 2020 haben sie die YarnSustain Schönrock Uhl GmbH gegründet.
Neben dem ursprünglichen Handstrickgarn gibt es jetzt nun auch ein eigens entwickeltes Industrie Garn, das sie der Modeindustrie als authentisch nachhaltige Garn Alternative zur Verfügung stellen wollen. 
die Vision
Unsere Vision ist es den Garnmarkt zu diversifizieren, dabei fangen wir mit Chiengora - Hundewolle an. Eine Ressource, die so schon vorhanden ist und aktuell weggeworfen ist. Wir sind der Überzeugung, dass wir in einer Zeit leben, in der wir es uns nicht mehr leisten können wertvolle Ressourcen dieser Erde zu verschwenden. 
das Netzwerk
Wie kommen wir aber an die ausgekämmte Unterwolle? Ganz einfach, würde man meinen. Tatsächlich ist es ziemlich kompliziert und basiert auf langfristigem Vertrauen: Wir bauen ein Netzwerk aus Hunde-Unterwolle Sammlern auf, dass so organisiert ist, dass jeder etwas davon hat. Denn auch die Hunde haben etwas davon. 
Gemeinsam mit all den Millionen Hundehaltern da draußen können wir eine wertvolle Ressource retten und damit einen authentisch nachhaltigen Einfluss auf die Modeindustrie nehmen. 
Better Together
Neugierig geworden? Auf Instagram und Facebook findet ihr Einblicke in unsere Reise als junges Textil Start Up. Hier habt Fragen oder wollt mit uns Zusammenarbeiten, schreibt uns an hello@modusintarsia.com  


Global fibre demand has been increasing exponentially for years. Although wool and fine animal hair account for just a small slice of the fibre market, they still have a huge impact on eco-systems and are having to contend with the popular rise of animal ethics.  With the help of hundreds of four-legged friends and their keepers, Modus Intarsia is already successfully producing chiengora. Together with a small spinning mill in Saxony, the odourless, fluffy wool is produced in beautiful natural colours and soft qualities. Pure chiengora is 80 percent warmer than sheep’s wool and naturally regulates body temperature. To keep the yarn sufficiently elastic, the wool is currently blended with alpaca and merino wool from Germany. The market for fine wool and merino wool is dominated by no more than a handful of countries around the world. It is a highly volatile market that is sensitive to natural disasters and climate change. Chiengora – the combed undercoats of specific dog breeds More than 85 million dogs are kept as pets in Europe alone. Around half of these four-legged friends are of potential relevance to the company. Their undercoats are removed during routine grooming and usually end up in the bin.  The idea to make this resource available to the market and to make a sustainable contribution within the textiles industry was inspired by company founder Ann Cathrin Schönrock, a trained knitting and fashion designer, who was looking for an authentically sustainable yarn.  It soon became clear that chiengora had great potential. After the company’s first successful year, Franziska Uhl, a budding textile engineer, entered the business. This year, the plan is to source the first tonne of this luxurious material.  The young, highly ambitious company is carrying out pioneering work on two levels. On the one hand, it has spent several years expanding a unique crowdsourcing network in which dog owners, breeders and grooming parlours around Europe send in their waste fur in return for fair payment. Up to 100% of the raw wool’s value can be donated to the company’s own tree project or to animal protection organisations.  On the other hand, Modus Intarsia is working intensively on the development and optimisation of technologies for processing the high-quality raw material chiengora and on the analysis of the fibres. There is strong demand for the industrial yarns which have already been developed.  As an animal-based hollow fibre, chiengora offers the perfect foundation for manufacturing a high-quality, 11-21-micron yarn which can be used in a wide variety of different textiles. Authentic sustainability is guaranteed through the new approach to raw material sourcing as well as the use of a natural fibre.  Modus Intarsia shows how traditional methods and approaches can be revamped and rethought.  The ambition of the two founders to transform their project into an innovative yarn company has been given a boost by the Exist start-up grant from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy. A decision in favour of the innovative project is still pending from the European Social Innovation Competition, as well as the Federal Prize for Ecodesign. 

Germany

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Modus Intarsia

<p>A knitwear designer and a textile engineer from Germany teamed up in 2018 to create Chiengora®, a yarn made from 100% combed out dog undercoat. In addition to hand knitting yarn, they have also developed an industrial yarn, providing a sustainable wool alternative for the fashion industry. Dog undercoat exists in abundance and has mostly been a household waste. The source of the raw material comes from a network of dog undercoat collectors, and in addition, they have the chance to donate all or part of the proceeds of the sent in undercoat to a non-profit animal welfare project. In their online shop, Modus Intarsia offers a range of products made from dog wool, such as hats, sweaters or socks.</p>