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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 green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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)

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

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 

Solidify definitions and create frameworks to support the understanding of the circular economy across contexts and maintain cohesive systems of data sharing, processing and storing.


 Knowledge Management

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

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

Prioritise regenerative resources [Textiles]

Regenerative materials [Textiles]

Using bio-based materials such as bioplastics, mushroom-based materials, etc.

Alternative bio-based materials and inputs [Textiles]

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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The Textiles Key Elements Framework is based on the main Key Elements Framework which renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive textile-focused strategies and interventions. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete inspiring exemples to prevent and reduce the textiles waste mountain. 

The Framework consists of:
- 3 core elements: activities directly handling textile product or material flows; and uniquely,
- 4 Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.

Under which strategies provide further detail. Finally, each strategy consists of a diversity of tangible solutions which are framed in relation to the sought outcome. 

'Click through each of the seven elements cards below to explore the framework and circular textile-focused case studies in more depth!'

This framework was developed in collaboration with Circle Economy's textiles team. Read more about it [here]( https://www.circle-economy.com/programmes/textiles). 

Textiles Key Elements Framework

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 An action-based framework for apparel brands working towards circular strategies

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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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                              Fashions change but the industry itself never really has. It’s always been about growing more cotton, using more water, spraying more chemicals and pumping more oil to sell more of the season’s must-haves. Bigger, faster, cheaper and more wasteful. It’s the opposite of sustainable.Circulose® changes fashion.It’s a new natural material made by gently recovering cotton from worn-out clothes. People that choose Circulose® garments cut their waste, climate, water, microplastics and deforestation fashion footprint to almost zero. → We’re on a journey to make all of fashion circular. Join us.                                                   Some of the world’s most sustainability-conscious and well known brands use Circulose®. It’s by combining creativity and style with innovation that we make fashion more circular, one garment at a time. → Sign up to our newsletter to get early info on collaborations and other exciting things.         KappAhl Spring collection 2021Available in selected stores and online starting May 2021.      BESTSELLER’s Fashion FWD Lab 2021Available in selected stores and online starting April 2021.     Levi’s® has launched its most sustainable jean ever, a garment made with organic cotton and Circulose®, available as part of the Levi’s® Wellthread™ line 2020.  This unique collaboration between Levi’s® Wellthread™, the laboratory to test and validate sustainability ideas through research & development and Circulose® marks a significant milestone in the denim industry’s transition to circularity.The Levi’s® recycled denim collection will be available on the Levi’s® App and on Levi.com July 21st, 2020.             Conscious Exclusive is a recurring collection of exquisite, premium pieces that celebrate the new season with a focus on sustainability and innovation. Conscious Exclusive SS20 introduces Circulose® to retail for the very first time with an easy, blue day dress inspired by the carefree summers of the 1920s Côte d’Azur. The dress consists of 100% viscose of which 50% is FSC certified wood and 50% is Circulose® recovered from post-consumer denim. It’s the piece that proved it – recycling clothes finally works.Available in selected stores worldwide and online starting March 26th 2020.             Circulose® is made from discarded textiles, like that worn-out pair of jeans at the back of your closet. Using a breakthrough process powered by 100% renewable energy, we transform old clothes into a pristine natural material that needs no cotton fields, no oil, and no trees.THIS IS HOW IT WORKS:We take in garments that can’t be resold to people. Either they’re way too worn-out or hopelessly out of style. We prefer cotton clothes because they contain a lot of cellulose.The clothes are shredded, de-buttoned, de-zipped, de-colored and turned into a slurry. Contaminants like plastic polyester are taken out. What remains is cellulose - the biodegradable organic polymer that cotton, trees and all green plants on earth are made out of. The slurry is dried to produce sheets of pure Circulose®. We package the sheets into bales and ship them to be made back into natural textile fibers.A brand designs new clothes using Circulose® fibers. → Loop closed.        BETTER THAN NEW QUALITY — CLIMATE POSITIVE — MINIMAL WATER USE — ZERO LAND USE — ZERO HABITAT DISTURBANCE —  ZERO FERTILIZERS OR PESTICIDES — ZERO VIRGIN RESOURCES — ZERO MICROPLASTICS                    

       Written by Simon Glover	    Published: 19 November 2020        STOCKHOLM - H&M has entered into a five-year agreement with Swedish recycling innovator Renewcell to replace virgin fibres with recycled textiles in garments at scale. By the end of the deal, Renewcell will be providing H&M's suppliers with 10,000 tons per year of its Circulose material which is made from 100 per cent recycled cotton and viscose from used clothes. H&M introduced Circulose in its SS2020 Conscious Exclusive Collection but the new agreement - said to be an industry first - will be the first time it has been used at scale, according to the partners. Log in or subscribe to see this content    

                
        
  Before a shirt is worn for the first time it has been through more steps than most customers realize. Often one producer makes the yarn, another knits or weaves it into textile fabric, and a third makes the shirt from the fabric. Now it’s ready for the customer to wear.
When garments are worn out or no longer wanted some are sold second-hand or used as hand-me-downs, but the vast majority end up in landfills or are incinerated. Much too few are recycled due to the fact that cotton and viscose can’t be recycled with satisfactory quality on a large enough scale. The cycle stops, because there is a hole in the loop, a crucial part is missing. Until now.    
        
  Our recycling technology dissolves used cotton and other cellulose fibers and transforms them into a new, biodegradable raw material: Circulose® pulp. Our customers use it to make biodegradable virgin quality viscose or lyocell textile fibers. This is the link that has been missing from the cycle. We close the loop. The way fashion is produced and consumed can finally be transformed into a never-ending loop.    
        
  Circulose® is a branded ‘dissolving pulp’ product that Renewcell makes from 100% textile waste such as worn-out jeans and production scraps. Dissolving pulp is what the textile industry uses to make viscose, lyocell, modal, acetate other types of regenerated fibers (also called ‘man-made cellulosic fibers’). The only difference with Circulose® is that it’s made from textile waste instead of wood.    
   

Sweden

Stockholm

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Levi's 

Renewcell

H&M Group

<p>Circulose® is a branded ‘dissolving pulp’ product that Renewcell makes from 100% textile waste such as worn-out jeans and production scraps. Dissolving pulp is what the textile industry uses to make viscose, lyocell, modal, acetate other types of regenerated fibers (also called ‘man-made cellulosic fibers’). The only difference with Circulose® is that it’s made from textile waste instead of wood.</p>