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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

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

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

Fashion and Textiles

Extracting and gathering wood through forestry and producing wood and paper products

Wood and Paper

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

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

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

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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 With OnceMore®, Södra is making an important contribution in the shift towards a sustainable textile industry. Just like Södra's other production processes, OnceMore® is an efficient, industrial-scale process that uses renewable wood from sustainable forestry. The development of OnceMore® is also one of our top priorities for the coming years.
OnceMore® presents a significant opportunity to make a positive impact on the environment. But we can't do this alone. Collaboration is the key to maximising the potential of OnceMore®. We are therefore interested in finding partners who can supply high volumes of textile waste for recycling.
What we are looking for
We are currently searching for white/unbleached cotton and/or polyester and cotton blends (minimum cotton content 50%). Traces of certain fibres, such as viscose and lyocell can be handled. See our material specification below. We also have the ambition to be able to handle colored textiles in the future OnceMore® process. Development work is ongoing.
Specifications
NOTE: All textiles should be laundered and clean.



Parameter
 
Limit




Fibre type
Cotton
> 50%


 
Polyester
< 50%


 
Viscose/Lyocell
< 5%


 
Others (for example nylon, acryl, modacrylic, spandex, lycra, elastane)
0%


Colour
 
White (maximum 5% of the total area of each textile can be colored)


Moisture content
 
< 8%


Metal or plastic like buttons and zippers or other decorations
 
No


RFID-tags
 
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As a supplier to OnceMore®, your company becomes part of a long-term solution to the global environmental threat posed by the ever-growing mountains of textile waste.
RFID instructions 

 Södra has a history of working with raw materials for the textile industry. Today we deliver dissolving pulp to some of the world’s largest viscose manufacturers, who, in turn, supply fibres, and their customers supply fabrics and materials to global brands. With OnceMore® we apply the same rigorous quality control, efficient production, reliable logistics, and long-term investments as we always have done. We aim for long term relationships with our customers.
Continuous improvement is necessary to maintain certification – we have to work in a systematic and goal-oriented manner to achieve our short and long-term goals. It assures our customers of our commitment to sustainable development of our community and our natural world.
Certification of recycled material RCS
Södra received its certification (1) according to the Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) on 24 June. (1) Certified by Control Union, CU 1059293. The proportion of recycled textiles in the OnceMore™ pulp opens up new possibilities for clothing manufacturers and brand owners to certify their end products according to standards such as RCS  – where the levels of recycled materials are crucial. 
Certification of wood - PEFC & FSC
Södra uses two systems for forest certification of member forest property - PEFC™ and FSC®. Södra has Chain of Custody certificates from PEFC and FSC for delivery of certified products.
Our certifications are quality-assurance measures of our expertise as well as our credibility. They are proof that we maintain a high level of awareness in our current and future products.

Read more about our certifications
 

Sweden

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Södra is an international forest industry group owned by more than 53,000 forest owners. 

Sodra

<p>Once More was developed by Sodra and it consists of a process that is able to recycle a blend of polyester and cotton at an industrial scale. The Once More dissolving pulp consists of one part of recycled textile waste and one part of sustainably managed wood.</p>