REFLOW

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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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Article / Report

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

Increase Awareness

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

Jobs

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

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

Efficiency gains on operations or transactions either through cultural or technological shifts

Productivity

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

Innovation

Scalability

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)

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Reduced use of fossil fuel energy sources and/or increased use of renewable energy

Reduce Energy Consumption

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

Biodiversity

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

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

Providing water and sewage services, including water collection and distribution, water treatment systems and sewage treatment facilities

Water and Sewage

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

Operating networks and software that enable the exchange and broadcasting of information, such as entertainment and internet software, television, cable, satellite or radio broadcasting systems, and cellular, wireless and/or fixed-line telecommunications services

Software and Communications

Providing various support services for businesses and governments, such as research, testing, certification and consulting services, cleaning and maintenance services, security and protection services, legal, accounting and bookkeeping services, information management, data processing, and business process outsourcing services

Research & Commercial Services

Producing electronics products for businesses and consumers, including cellular phones, personal computers, printers, servers, electronic computer components and peripherals, TVs, audio equipment, as well as household appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, etc.

Electronics and Appliances

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

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

Wood and Paper

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

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

Use waste as a resource

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

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

Use digital, online platforms and technologies that provide insights to track and optimise resource use, strengthen connections between supply chain actors, and enable the implementation of circular models



Incorporate digital technology

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

Regenerative materials

Data, knowledge & information sharing

Conduct research

Infrastructure

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

Institutional design to enable circularity

Cross-departmental collaboration and engagement

Advocate for circular change

Voluntary agreements around circular ambitions

Matchmaking platforms

 Regulation

Legislation

'Incentivise' sends market signals and support to businesses, citizens and governments to promote certain activities.

Incentivise

 Spatial Planning

 Public Procurement

Asset Management

Awareness raising events

Information campaigns

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

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

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

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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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

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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We welcome innovators, dreamers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and researchers who are creating tangible solutions to urban issues. Through becoming a member of our community you will join our ecosystem of shared resources, knowledge, and practical solutions to accelerate the transition towards circular cities.

Copenhagen

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Municipality of Paris

Municipality of Milan

Municipality of Berlin

Municipality of Amsterdam

The Copenhagen Business School

Municipality of Vejle

Municipality of Cluj-Napoca

REFLOW was an EU Horizon 2020 innovation action project running from 2019 to 2022, with the aim to increase circularity in European cities. Through REFLOW, the 28 project partners developed a range of solutions to make the material flows more circular within the six pilot cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, Cluj-Napoca, Paris, and Vejle. The cities' social, environmental, and economic impact was assessed, and a range of solutions enabling the circular transition were developed through active citizen involvement. The project combined the expertise of the project partners spanning municipalities, scientific and research institutions, technology providers, design and grassroot organisations, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The transition to circular cities requires whole-scale system reforms, new regulations, investment, and partnerships, as well as a new body of knowledge and capacities. Above all, circular transitions require new forms of democratised innovation so that all actors in cities can benefit from the opportunities that the circular economy will create. In the REFLOW project, collaborative governance was understood as a long-term, systemic process of steering and coordination of all different levers in cities, to allow distributed capacity, legitimacy, and agency for circular change across public and private sectors. The REFLOW Collaborative Governance Toolkit (RCGT) was developed as a practical guide to design and develop collaborative governance approaches, supporting cities in their circular and regenerative transition. In other words, the toolkit offers an open collection of tools and resources to&nbsp;support collaborative journeys towards circularity. The toolkit is based on the collaborative governance framework, illustrating the open-ended infrastructure process of transforming cities. This process operates at different scopes and scales with different emphases on strategic, operational, and relational aspects. Circular levers, enabling innovation from individual to societal scale, can foster each aspect. These levers, as a set of instruments, can be found in the toolkit and each tool is tagged according to the infrastructures and levers it belongs to. The RCGT comprises fourteen tools with detailed advice of use and theoretical background. Further, the RCGT website provides stories of circular cities using the toolkit to provide inspiration and best practice examples for all actors involved in the circular transition. The tools: - Circular Theory of Change: A tool that helps you defining the logic concatenations and connectivity between long-term goals and impacts, outcomes, outputs and activities.- Circular Mission Wave: A tool that helps you define and visualize a mission-oriented transition to circular and regenerative cities based on a systemic and long-term approach of intervention.- Circular Challenges &amp; Opportunities: A tool that helps collaborative brainstorming on circular challenges and opportunities, as well as their prioritization for action.- City Portrait Canvas: Inspired by the four lenses of the City Portrait, this canvas helps understand how to assess city strategies, policies, and programmes in a holistic way, integrating environmental, social and economic, as well as local and global considerations.- Circular Experiment Deployment Canvas:&nbsp;A tool that helps you and your team in defining, planning and resourcing a circular experiment towards impact.- Circular Experiment Canvas: A tool that helps you and your team in designing the key characteristics of a circular experiment and to carry them forward into iterative cycles, towards a more detailed delivery plan.- Circular Portfolio Canvas: A visual tool that helps you and your team in scaffolding circular activities and experiments across different horizons of time, and to reflect on ‘’connectivity’’ and ‘’linkages’’ towards higher ambitions of circular and regenerative cities.- Map &amp; Visualise Circular Ecosystem (Kumu): A tool that allows dynamic mapping and visualization of your circular ecosystem, including stakeholders, individuals and circular initiatives and projects.- Circular Team: A combination of tools that support the definition of circular teams and the overall decision-making path.- Matrix of Circular Collaboration: A tool that facilitates coordination, matchmaking and collaboration across different circular projects and initiatives.- Circular Loops Diagram: A diagram that helps you mapping the specific value chains and actions to form circular loops and drive systems change.&nbsp;- Backcasting Diagram: A diagram that helps you redesign the local ecosystem starting from a previous identified circular loop (you can first work on the Circular Loops diagram if you don’t already have one).- Circular Business Model Canvas: The circular business model canvas integrates buildings blocks from the generic business model canvas, while highlighting additional aspects making your business circular.&nbsp;During the development-process of circular solutions, all pilot cities designed and illustrated their ideas, and made use of the regenerative governance tools such as the circular business model canvas. Throughout the process of the project, each pilot city set performance goals with particular focus on joint activities to reach these. To validate and refine the causal pathways within each pilot, recurring iterations were conducted based on the circular theory of change.

The REFLOW Collaborative Governance Toolkit – a toolbox for change

This case study introduces the REFLOW Framework as a supportive model to enable agency and participation of municipalities, SMEs, and citizens’ associations in the development of circular economy (CE) practices and governance. After introducing the key terminology informing the REFLOW's understanding of cities' transition towards CE, this deliverable provides the most updated version of the REFLOW Pilot Cities’ Circular Action Plans, including their final list of key performance indicators, and main implementation challenges encountered so far. Based on insights from research and practice, as well as from the experience of the first two years of the REFLOW project, the REFLOW Framework integrates key concepts from systems thinking, management accounting, iterative design, and circular economy research to understand and describe circular transitions in cities. As a supportive model, the REFLOW Framework enables to unpack the inherent complexity characterising cities' transitions towards Circular Economy, and inform management, governance and implementation of Cities' Circular Action Plans. The Framework described in this deliverable will serve as a baseline to support Cities' Ecosystem Design and the development of the REFLOW Legacy in the last year of the project. Each city developed a circular cities action plan relying on the REFLOW Framework. Focusing on one pilot, Amsterdam organized its activities based on two interconnected scenarios – one in the short-term (Citizen Scenario) and one in the long-term (Industrial Scenario) – all of which collectively aim to spearhead the transition of textile material flows from linear to circular in the Amsterdam region. Together, these two interconnected scenarios feed into a third scenario focusing on policy. The Policy Scenario runs alongside the Amsterdam pilot’s activities, tackling policies and governance issues in relation to Amsterdam’s circular goals.&nbsp;You can find the full 1.3 Deliverable following the link below.