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Starter Kit collection

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This collection features a selection of case studies, mainly based on the [2024 Circularity Gap Report](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024). 

In this year’s Report, we shift from exploring the what to the how: exploring the different ways that we need to ‘change the rules of the game’ and create a set of conditions that discourage the overshoot of planetary boundaries and ‘undershoot’ of human development. This process has resulted in us spotlighting 12 of the original 16 solutions, highlighting the country profile that they are most relevant to, as well as placing people at the centre of this story for the first time. Based on extensive interviews and desk research, this Report aims to show governments and industry leaders that if they want to turn theory into action and scale an economy that delivers on needs within the safe limits of the planet, they need to dismantle harmful entrenched processes and align enabling elements. 

[Circle Economy](https://www.circle-economy.com/) is a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. We empower industries, cities, and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Our vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, our goal is to double global circularity by 2032. 

Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. 

To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the [latest Circularity Gap Report 2024](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

Global Circularity Gap Report 2024

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Business case

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

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)

Providing public and private education and support services at any level or for any profession, and governmental and public administration services, including judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities, taxation, defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes

Education and Government Services

Collecting waste from households and businesses by means of refuse bins, wheeled bins, containers, etc., and providing treatment, incineration, materials recovery and reclamation, and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste

Waste Management

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

Fashion and Textiles

Providing goods on the Internet, through mail order, or television, or providing goods in stores, including apparel, electronics, furniture, food and drug, etc.

Retail

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

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Engaging in discussions with government bodies and policymakers to push for regulations that support the circular economy

Advocacy for circular economy policy

Circular Economy in school programmes

Data, knowledge & information sharing

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

Research and Development

Conduct research

Raise awareness and run information campaigns about  strategies for and impacts of the circular economy in different contexts.

Communication and awareness

Awareness raising events

These countries are home to around a quarter of the global population, yet consume over one-third (34%) of raw materials. Shift countries’ material footprint per capita is 4.6 times that of Build countries (largely due to the overconsumption of consumer goods imported from Grow counties) and 1.6 times that of Grow countries.

These are high-income countries in the Global North, as well as in the Gulf, Australia, and Oceania. Examples include:
- Member States of the EU
- the US
- Japan
- the UK
- Canada
- Argentina, ...

While much of their infrastructure is already built, they still contribute heavily to the overshoot of planetary boundaries: they contribute 42% of climate change, 27% of nitrogen, 18% of phosphorus, 16% of freshwater use and 38% of land use change.

To find out what country profile your country belongs to, explore [this interactive story](https://circularity-gap.world) and search for your country on the final map.  


Shift

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

Manufactured goods, such as vehicles, textiles, appliances and equipment and their associated production processes are big employers but:
- production processes often rely on fossil fuels and currently drive one-third of the overshoot on the climate change planetary boundary due to its GHG production, 
- material- and energy-intensive industrial activities are linked to deforestation and drive 15% on both the land use and freshwater planetary boundaries, 
- manufacturing goods results in substantial amounts of hazardous industrial waste and leaks chemicals into the environment.

Here, circular solutions must tackle the full value chain, but material demand must also shrink: this will necessitate a societal shift to favouring sufficiency over excess and reducing consumption to sustainable levels. Our four key solutions for manufactured goods are:
- Mainstream industrial symbiosis and efficiency : Achieve process improvements, scrap diversion and reduction in yield losses through greater industrial symbiosis and efficiency. Foster tighter collaboration within and between industries to deliver powerful material and emissions savings.
- Extend the lifetime of machinery, equipment, and goods: Maximise the lifetime of goods that serve our daily needs to bring a number of environmental benefits. 
- Buy what's needed: Reduce the number of purchases of common electronic goods, appliances, and other equipment to sufficiency levels. 
- Eschew fast fashion in favour of sustainable textiles: Drastically reduce new clothing purchases. All used clothing should go on to be repaired, reused or, if needed, recycled appropriately. Prioritise natural and local textile manufacturing, as well as higher-quality and more durable garments. 




👕📱 Consumer Goods

👕📱 Consumer goods

Based on extensive interviews and desk research, this Report aims to show governments and industry leaders that if they want to turn theory into action and scale an economy that delivers on needs within the safe limits of the planet, they need to dismantle harmful entrenched processes and align enabling elements - policy, finance, and people

- Build circular expertise and skills: Ensure people are skilled and trained to ensure a just transition where opportunities and decent livelihoods are fairly distributed across and within societies.


People

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

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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Too much clothing. Not enough Justice.Too often a consumer. So rarely a human.It is time to recover. You are invited.
The OR Foundation (pronounced “or”) stands for choice. Choice is agency – agency to escape the predominant violent socio-economic system of corporate colonialism and to change it from within. We are a 501(C)(3) public charity in the USA and a registered charity in Ghana that has been operating in both countries since 2009. Working at the intersection of environmental justice, education and fashion development, our mission is to identify and manifest alternatives to the dominant model of fashion – alternatives that bring forth ecological prosperity, as opposed to destruction, and that inspire citizens to form a relationship with fashion that extends beyond their role as consumer.
Tangibly our goal is to catalyze a Justice-Led Circular Economy. There are many layers to this work, including immediate relief through direct action on human rights and environmental abuses, educational programming and awareness in order to shift individual actions, and research and institutional advocacy to steer systems level policies and investments. At every level our initiatives are founded on the belief that Justice within the violent yet beautiful world we share begins with Reckoning, Recovery and Reparations. There is much work to be done.


 
 2020-Present | Active
Holistic direct action to: Tangibly regenerate and decompose material resources that currently leave Kantamanto Market as toxic waste
Foster Food Sovereignty for women working as Kayayei, or head carriers.
Break the cycle of exploitation and dependency that corrupts the secondhand ecosystem and traps people in debt.



 
 2018-Present | Active
In partnership with the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design, SFI represents a coalition of students and professionals working to develop a hyper-localized circular economy and to educate on sustainability and social inequality. SFI has reduced the textile waste from UC’s fashion design program by 70%, and is assisting local businesses to do the same. SFI hosts clothing swaps, mending circles, panels and workshops. SFI has published extensive research on unpaid internships and has supported the development of an anti-racism curriculum.


 

Collectofus 2.0
2020-Present | Active
Engages emerging designers in a peer-based object-exchange curriculum focused on removing marketing from the designer-to-consumer relationship, rethinking sustainability rhetoric and researching the accessibility of bespoke tailoring services. Designers are offered micro-grants to make a bespoke garment for a stranger on the internet using garment co-construction as a vehicle for sustainable relationships, learning and financial literacy. 


 
 2016-Present | Active
An immersive, multimedia research project into Accra, Ghana's Kantamanto Secondhand Clothing Market as both a global model for circularity and a manifestation of global injustice. Conducted to inform individual actions and policy frameworks, and to serve as a platform for community organizing.


 
 2016-2019 | Inactive
Fashion’s impact can be difficult to understand, let alone measure. At the same time we put clothing on our bodies every single day. What can we learn from tracking our daily usage of clothing? What questions arise when we gather information from our own closets? AllSix is a platform and app that invites users to begin every day with an acknowledgment of their garments history and their patterns as a wearer.


 
 2017 | Inactive
Inspired by the words of Rana Plaza survivor Reba Sikder, For Their Memory is a music video and fundraising project honoring the 1,138 people who died in the tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza fashion factory and the other countless lives lost to the violence of overproduction and overconsumption.


 
 2011-2016 | Inactive
An object-based exchange initiative that disrupts common notions of globalized trade. Grounded in the tangible experience of making & receiving an item of clothing from their peers abroad, students compare this method of connection with the dominant model of trade. Collectofus culminates in student-led design justice projects that have included dye gardens, redesigning school apparel and building solar charging stations. Collectofus has engaged over 20 partner institutions and 1,500+ students.


 
 2012-2015 | Inactive
Students engage with the realities of their local thrift store and donation system. Tasked with taking garments that were donated in undignified condition and transforming them into clothing that bring joy to the wearer, students learn to sew, dye and construct clothing with purpose while also thinking critically about the dominant narrative surrounding clothing poverty. Hundreds of students across the USA have participated in Minimakers.


 

Not Just Soccer 2.0
2015 | Inactive
Fostering a social guidebook and resilient community support systems through sport, this project updated an innovative community game in Mabatlane, or Vaalwater, Limpopo, South Africa through the Waterberg Welfare Society.


 
 2011-2016 | Inactive
A year-long interdisciplinary curriculum for K-12 students exploring colonization and globalization through the lens of the fashion industry – past, present and speculative. Grounded in the study of their own closets, the curriculum teaches students how to “read objects” as part of a larger mission to “read the world” – a mission inspired by Paulo Freire’s decolonizing pedagogy. This curriculum has been incorporated into over 20 educational institutions across the USA, Ghana and South Africa.


 
 2011-2012 | Inactive
Students are invited to recycle their single-use tees, and other garments, into backpacks in collaboration with Ghanaian seamstresses and tailors. The backpacks were priced by students to reflect their valorization matrix and sold to benefit an organization of their choice.


 

(Sustainable) Fashion's Night Out
2011 | Inactive
Produced in Partnership with Manhattan’s Textile Arts Center, the NYC Fair Trade Coalition and EcoSalon, the first ever (Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out and LookBook featured fair trade, upcycled and slowly crafted garments, and asked the evening's guests to engage beyond the price tag.




WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // WE PRODUCE MORE THAN WE CONSUME // WE CONSUME MORE THAN WE USE // WE WASTE // 

United States

Ghana

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The OR Foundation

<p>The OR Foundation is a US-based non-profit organization co-founded by Liz Ricketts and Branson Skinner. Their work aims to foster a justice-led circular fashion economy and focuses on identifying and enabling alternatives to the status quo operations of our current fashion system. These alternatives emphasize ecological prosperity and the formation of meaningful relationships between individual and clothing that extend beyond consumerism. Their research and projects address the interconnected areas of environmental justice, education, and fashion development. One of the OR's research initiatives, "Dead White Man's Clothes," extensively examines Accra, Ghana’s Kantamanto Market (the largest secondhand market in West Africa), highlighting it as both a model for circularity and manifestation of global injustices — a consequence of the Global North's enduring throw-away culture. The OR Foundation has also centered social inequity within fashion education through its Sustainable Fashion Initiative (SFI), a student-minded coalition at the University of Cincinnati working to make the school's fashion program both zero-waste and equity-focused, while also developing a hyper-localized circular economy.</p>