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This collection features a selection of inspiring examples of the circular economy, compiled in the context of the Switch to Circular Economy Value Chains programme (SWITCH).

Launched in 2020, SWITCH is a five-year initiative that assists EU multinational companies and their suppliers from developing countries to switch to more circular economy approaches and practices in three selected value chains: [Plastic Packaging](https://knowledge-hub.circle-lab.com/switchtocircular/search?collections=832%3D0&framework_elements__5=111), [Textile & Garments](https://knowledge-hub.circle-lab.com/switchtocircular/search?collections=832%3D0&framework_elements__5=99), and ICT and Electronics.

The overall objective of SWITCH is to support the “transformation towards a circular economy”, and to contribute to sustainable growth, low carbon and climate resilient development, decent jobs creation, and a safer, healthier and pollution-free environment.

SWITCH is co-funded by the European Union and the Government of Finland, and implemented by UNIDO, in collaboration with Chatham House, Circle Economy, and the European Investment Bank.
Learn more at www.switchtocircular.eu

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Switch to Circular Economy Value Chains

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Starter Kit collection

Business case

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

Increase Awareness

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)

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

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

Fashion and Textiles

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

Employ technologies to gather and analyse data to provide insights on resource use

Data and insights

Utilising data and models to to identify, enable and/or implement circular strategies (eg. effective resource use & logistics planning, circular business models & design)

Data analytics, modelling

Locally produced food has to travel shorter, which means less fuel is consumed and less greenhouse gases are generated. Moreover, buying locally produced food helps local farmers and markets and creates more jobs in the local businesses. 


Produce locally

Solutions at all stages of the textiles value chain.

Zero Waste Textiles

Other

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

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

Urban Opportunities

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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 for material suppliers, fashion brands and recyclers including a Circular Design Software that creates unique circularity.IDs for garments. This digital tag provides transparent information to users and sorters to ensure closed loop recycling. 

  To enable change and accelerate transformation towards a circular economy for fashion and textiles, leveraging technology and data plays a key role. By designing garments for circularity from the beginning and providing stakeholders with essential information at each consecutive stage of the product’s lifecycle enormous environmental, financial and creative value can be captured and re-released to the greater benefit of people and planet.   The circularity.ID holds material and product data, along with a product’s entire story. This ensures future reuse, reselling and recycling at the highest possible level of sustainability. Through this system, data becomes accessible to stakeholders in the fashion ecosystem at any point in time to assess and handle products in a circular economy.   circular.fashion develops services and software for circular design and closed loop recycling that enable a transparent flow of information between material suppliers, fashion brands, consumers and recyclers.   

          Together with Fashion for Good and circular.fashion, Zalando enables customers to learn more about and extend the life of their products          Customers increasingly want to know more about the products they buy. They want transparent information and advice on how to care for their clothes to prolong their life. Currently only one percent of clothing is recycled into new materials, garments of today largely become the waste of tomorrow. 

To learn how we can tackle this problem at scale and use technology to enable our customers to close the loop, Zalando has teamed up with sustainable fashion innovation platform, Fashion for Good, and Berlin based startup, circular.fashion, to develop the “redeZIGN for Circularity” capsule collection, which is now available to customers in all 17 Zalando markets. The capsule collection consists of five pieces and is produced by Zalando’s sustainability flagship label ZIGN. The collection offers customers the opportunity to learn more about the origin of products and how to extend the product’s life, bringing Zalando closer to its goal of applying the principles of circularity and extending the life of at least 50 million items by 2023 as stated in its do.MORE strategy.      Each item is designed to be recyclable with input from circular.fashion on its circularity potential and aims to match specific recyclers in their network. Customers will find a QR code, the “circularity.ID®️,” woven into the item’s label that takes customers to a product site where they can learn about the factory their product was produced in, the materials and trims it’s made of, as well as expanded care instructions and end-of-use opportunities, such as trading their item back into Zalando’s new pre-owned category or recycling it.                         “We’re excited to offer our customers a collection designed with circularity principles in mind and testing an end-to-end solution that goes beyond circular design. With this pilot project, we will gather learnings on how customers value this additional level of product transparency and how it can help them extend the life of their garments,” says Kate Heiny, Director Sustainability at Zalando.   The Zalando platform, private label ZIGN and recently launched pre-owned offer provide an excellent testing ground for circular.fashion's technology. It is Zalando’s aim to scale the learnings of this pilot across its private label business, as well as its brand partners, to make it even easier for customers to extend the life of garments. This marks another step on Zalando’s journey to becoming a sustainable fashion platform with a net-positive impact on people and the planet 

To find out more about Zalando’s progress when it comes to sustainability, click here.          Tags  Corporate Responsibility     



view the website | development guidelines
current version of immutable data: 2.0 as xml | as pdf
current version of mutable data: 2.0 as json
all versions
Description
The circularity.ID Open Data Standard describes essential digital product data for clothing and textiles to enable circular economy and recyclability in the fashion industry. Products identifiable with the circularity.ID Open Data Standard make the entire story of a product and its material components accessible and enable circular use and end-of-life phase on the data level.
Objective & Scope
The circularity.ID Open Data Standard is intended for use in the fashion industry for the labelling, identification and storing of digital product data, optimising products for a circular economy. It is specifically targeting the circularity and recyclability of textiles, and ultimately designed for the potential of fibre-to-fibre recycling.
In short, the circularity.ID can ensure that:

Information on essential material and chemical components is assessed, stored and accessible
Product data is automatically recognised by software at sorting facilities
Products are matched to appropriate recyclers, to be recyclable to best knowledge and method according to the current state of technology at end-of-life
Essential product information is available to consumers to enable longevity and multiple use cycles for a product, e.g through redesign and resell services.

Format
circularity.ID ODS is split into an XML component that contains immutable product data including material and chemical components, and a mutable set of data that contains product information such as product images, description, sustainability consumer information and service offers in json format.
Contact
The circularity.ID is initiated and administered by circular.fashion UG (haftungsbeschränkt).
Contact: https://circular.fashion/about/
Guidelines for Use
Use of circularity.ID Open Data Standard
The circularity.ID Open Data Standard can be used according to the License GNU General Public License v3.0. and always needs to be referenced when using or modifying the standard. Using the circularity.ID Open Data Standard does not imply that a product was tested for recyclability by circular.fashion, but the use of the standard data format enables circular.fashion to conduct Circular Product Checks, and supports connected services and applications. The circularity.ID Open Data Standard does not imply that data created according to the standard must be made public.
Use of circularity.ID Trademark
circularity.ID is a registered trademark. Using the the circularity.ID Open Data Standard does not include allowance for using the circularity.ID  trademark. circular.fashion is the only issuing body of the circularity.ID and will provide a unique identifying number as a proof. Only when circular.fashion issued an ID as  circularity.ID the trademark is allowed to be used following separate guidelines stated in a different document.
Developing
For information on how to integrate the open data standard into your tech tools, or for contributing see developing circularity.ID
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circular.fashion is a sustainable change agency creating software and system innovation for a circular economy in fashion and textiles. 

The company develops services and software for circular design and closed loop recycling to enable a transparent flow of information between material suppliers, fashion brands, consumers and recyclers. At the centre of the circular.fashion system is the circularity.ID, which holds material and product data, along with a product’s entire story. This ensures future reuse, reselling and recycling at the highest possible level of sustainability. Through this system, data becomes accessible to stakeholders in the fashion ecosystem at any point in time to assess and handle products in a circular economy.

circular.fashion

Circular. fashion is a sustainable change agency, creating software and system innovation for a circular economy in fashion and textiles. The company develops services and software for circular design and closed-loop recycling to enable a transparent flow of information between material suppliers, fashion brands, consumers, and recyclers.

circular.fashion - software and digital IDs to promote circularity 

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

Innovation

Scalability

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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

Collection programmes that process products and parts for reuse or recycling within the same industry

Closed loop collection

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

Communication and awareness

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

    Raw Material Material Supplier Fabric Fashion Brand Garment Customer Old Clothes Sorting Company Waste Recycler Raw Material Material Supplier Fabric Fashion Brand Garment Customer Old Clothes Sorting Company Waste Recycler Raw Material Material Supplier Fabric Fashion Brand Garment Customer Old Clothes Sorting Company Waste Recycler            01 — Production  Material Suppliers provide circularity enabled items        02 — Creation  Brands design fashion for circularity        03 — Utilisation  Consumers are engaged in reusing and returning clothes for recycling        04 — Reutilisation  Sorters and Recyclers have access to material information                          A Digital Platform for circular design and closed-loop recycling, including recyclable materials and design guidelines. Here the data contained in our circularity.ID®s are hosted and enable a transparent flow of information in the value chain.                    We provide various services that encourage and enable fashion brands to incorporate circularity into the core of their business. We provide industry knowledge and methods that help your brand transitioning towards circular practices.                    Our digital information carrier is integrated into a product holding its story as well as necessary material and product data to enable reuse, resale and recycling.                                                                                                                           70+ brands, global players and 500+ designers trained and consulted since 2019. Including the following: See the list of all our clients         Moving towards a circular economy is not an option - it is essential to thrive as a business in the future.   Be part of the change and join the circular.fashion system. Reach out to us for more information and learn how we can support your company.    Jonna Haeggblom Circular design strategist for longevity and extended product life, PR, marketing and communication.           Get in touch         

     What is the circularity.ID® Open Data Standard  To enable change and accelerate transformation, leveraging technology and data plays a key role. The circularity.ID® Open Data Standard is intended for use in the fashion industry to store, label and identify digital product data for powering circular practices.Over seven years of research, pilots and collaboration along the fashion value chain have been translated into the circularity.ID® Open Data Standard.Insights and requirements for making a circular product from material, to design, use and sorting have been aggregated into the standard to be able to ensure longevity and recycling at end-of-life.    Why open industry standards are needed for a systemic change  With the mission of wider adoption of circular practices and to align with initiatives striving for the same goal, we released the circularity.ID® as an Open Data Standard. Open industry standards set an example for collaboration and streamlining of efforts to arrive at holistic models for data-driven, sustainable impact.                   We are actively involved in multiple standardisation initiatives across the globe for optimizing the dataset of our circularity.ID® Open Data Standard according to ever changing industry needs. Contact us if you want to contribute and become part of the change.          Mario Malzacher Co-Founder & Business Development                


Die Tags selbst sind passiv. Das bedeutet sie bauen selber kein Magnetfeld auf oder senden Strahlung aus. Ähnliche Chips werden auch genutzt etwa bei Kreditkarten oder bei Zugangssystemen von Gebäuden.
Es ist daher nicht möglich, dass die NFC-tags von alleine mit Herzschrittmachern, Hörgeräten oder ähnlichen medizinischen Apparaten in Konflikt geraten. Diese Möglichkeit besteht erst, wenn Lesegeräte genutzt werden, die ein Magnetfeld aufbauen. Daher sollten Menschen z.B. mit Herzschrittmachern diese vermeiden. Nutzer von Schrittmachern können daher das NFC-Tag nicht auslesen, da sie generell die NFC-Funktionlität beispielsweise ihres Smartphones nicht verwenden sollten. Dies sollte aber generell für diese Funktion gelten und ist nicht circularity.ID®spezifisch.


Berlin

Armed Angels

FairWertung

circular.fashion and FairWertung initiate the Closed Loop Pilot together with the fashion brands ARMEDANGELS, Besonnen, OTTO, The Slow Label and Vretena and charitable textile collectors/ sorters. The aim of the project is to apply a closed loop system for the fashion industry in practice and on a larger scale. The project was launched in June 2021 with a joint kick-off workshop and will run until the end of 2022.

Closed Loop Pilot - Pioneering circular business models in fashion

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Producing and providing services that utilise the creative talent of individuals to generate intellectual property, including movies and television shows, music, live performances, advertising, marketing or public relations services, newspapers, magazines and books, and commercial printing services

Creative Services

Designing products so they use as little materials, water, energy, etc. as possible during use

Design for resource efficiency

Working together with industry peers to engage in business activities or exploratory projects that advance the circular economy

Joint industry ventures, projects, pilots

Provide guidance or professional training to educate employees to use circular economy principles

Training on the circular economy

Developing or utilising online platforms to enable circular economy opportunities through information, product or service offering

Online platforms

circular.fashion is a sustainable change agency creating software and system innovation for a circular economy in fashion and textiles.