Circular economy (CE) is a concept that promotes sustainable fashion consumption, design strategies, new business thinking, and a sustainable approach towards textile waste. It is regenerative by nature.
While many businesses in the fashion industry are just beginning to acknowledge how to implement it, it is not an entirely new concept.
It originates from Walter R. Stahler‘s report “The potential of substituting manpower for energy” in 1976 where he talked about the economy in loops, economic competitiveness, reduced dependence on natural resources, and the prevention of waste.
This idea was further developed by German chemist Michael Braungart and US architect William McDonough who in their book “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” (2002) detail how to achieve their Cradle to Cradle Design Model.
Current reality – linear economy
It is a known fact that the fashion industry is the second most destructive industry to the environment after the oil industry. Up to 95% of textiles that could be recycled end up in landfills.
The fashion industry uses 98 million tons of non-renewable sources per year. To name a few examples: oil is used to produce synthetic fibers, fertilizers are used to grow cotton, different chemicals are used to produce dye, and finish fibers and textiles.
Unfortunately, the costs of environmental impacts are not included in the end price of the product.
This linear system (also known as fast fashion) is wasting valuable materials in huge amounts, promotes intensive consumption and impulse purchasing, and makes consumers actively seek emotional “highs” by constant buying. Despite that, 20% of garments are believed to be unsold each year and 1/3 of materials become waste already in the production phase.
Moreover, most of our wardrobes are full of disused garments.
It is therefore important to develop better use of resources and change the entire system towards more sustainable practices. But how can fashion be redesigned in the context of a circular economy?
Creating closed-loop systems
The circular economy aims to develop a system where the goal is to extend the use-time of garments and maintain the value of the products and materials as long as possible. It is a system where all aspects support circularity and where all stakeholders (designers, producers, manufacturers, suppliers, business people, customers) need to have a more holistic approach.
It is a system where the original design of the product needs to take into account several lifecycles and where all products need to be collected back after their use is over.
This all requires certain policy measurements in place and new kinds of collaborations to get everyone on board. It is a challenge for the industry, businesses, and designers, but also for consumers who need to critically consider their own consumption policies.
It is important to have a new consciousness towards the use of clothing and introduce new practices for using our clothing longer, maintaining it well, but also investing in smaller wardrobes with less content.
Key principles of circular economy
- New business thinking
Just imagine – if we double the time of clothing, we can halve the resources needed for production and halve the waste rates of consumption.
There are already a few businesses and brands that offer garments for renting or lease (e.g. MUD Jeans) and the ones that offer mending services (e.g Patagonia). The aim is to focus more on use and product utilization and less on selling the product.
The brands need to develop a new, more strategic, and future-oriented mindset in all aspects of the company’s activity. In CE a core has to be in the lifecycle, use, and regeneration of products and closing material loop.
- Enabling technology and grassroots activities
The IT can help better track the origin and flow of materials and therefore give more transparency about the origin of the product. Different online services and websites allow to check the production paths and give tools to work with sustainability issues along the production line and calculate the best choices for lifecycle analysis (e.g https://makersite.io/).
Reverse Resources is a tracking and trading platform for textile waste, providing 360-degree transparency of the waste flows. As they themselves put it, it’s like an Uber of textile waste.
Crowdfunding enables users to invest in projects that they want to see implemented.
Technology has also helped to create a sharing economy that is about cooperation, sharing, flexibility, lending, giving, and gifting. Anyone can open a platform that offers repair or swapping services. Different mending and knitting clubs also improve social interactions in different communities.
IT revolution is therefore enabling circularity and the rethinking of materials, energy, and credit flows. It provides opportunities to act and operate on different scales or combine different actors in a new kind of collaboration, showing new alternatives for large business operations
- Dealing with and recovering waste
In the current linear business model, there is a lot of pre-and post-consumer textile waste.
We have already talked about some zero-waste fashion techniques which help to reduce or completely eliminate pre-consumer textile waste. For post-consumer textile waste, there are mechanical, thermal, and chemical recycling methods available.
Mechanical recycling means that material is selected, cut, shredded, carded, and spun into new yarns. The downside of it is the quality of the yarn and therefore the end product.
In thermal and chemical recycling, the material is returned to polymer level by dissolving it, and thereafter the fiber is regenerated.
Unfortunately, a lot of recycling is currently still down-cycling which means the value of the material is lost.
However, a lot of development work has been done recently to construct different technologies to be used with different fibers in the mechanical and chemical recycling processes.
- More creativity and collaborations
Redesigning materials, systems, and products for circular use is a fundamental requirement of a circular economy. It represents huge opportunities for companies and also in product categories that are normally not considered innovative.
Designers can use their creative skills to enhance collaboration between different knowledge areas, build new networks and connections between different stakeholders, and push the boundaries between disciplines.
Businesses need to think about how to create stronger brand value and new profit-making possibilities.
The policymakers have to think about what would be the best ways to invite (more) companies, industry, and consumers into this transformation process.
CE requires therefore collective creativity for effective implementation.
- Strategic design and innovation
More creative and strategic design is needed to build a sustainable product.
The commonly accepted role of design as a cheap resource of ideas, as a profession of beautification, and as a powerful marketing “tool” must be seriously questioned. In CE the role of the designer becomes a knowledge-intensive profession.
The design phase also needs to address the material throughoutput to make sure it slows down.
Good stuff is durable, made from locally sourced sustainable materials, repairable, fit for purpose, and dismantlable. It has a valued purpose.
Designers should focus on creating something more meaningful and special for the end-user. Something that they are ready to fall in love with, keep long, cherish and take care of.
The impact of circular economy
The circular economy can greatly support and boost the local economy.
Waste is better handled locally. Reuse, updating, and modification can be achieved more flexibly within close distance. Sharing economy creates also better opportunities for local actors and communities.
Investing in and creating local actions intensifies the use of labor. Many activities in CE are labor-intensive and therefore boost the micro-and also macro-levels of the economy.
By rethinking the way we produce, work, and buy, we can generate new opportunities and create new jobs.
Circular thinking uses fewer, and preserves the water and environment, ending up on low carbon use, less use of energy, and fewer virgin materials, making circularity, therefore, more ecological than the industrial process in the linear model.
Even a slight change in the consumer behavior can have a big effect.
To sum up:
- CE is an emerging phenomenon that will considerably change the fashion system
- Small companies and even grassroot initiatives can show alternative ways towards a more sustainable future
- It requires the policy and legislation to tighten and it is already happening at least on the European level
- CE needs a systematic perspective and tight collaboration between different stakeholders
- Transformation towards CE needs creativity, new way of thinking and acting, new networks, large collaborations and brave experimentation
