The Circular Economy Action Agenda for Textiles

Global
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a charity which seeks to inspire decision makers across business, government, and academia to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy.
Launched in May 2017, Make Fashion Circular brings together leaders from across the fashion industry, including brands, cities, philanthropists, NGOs, and innovators. It is leading international efforts to stop waste and pollution in fashion by creating a circular economy for the industry, where products (apparel, footwear and accessories) are used more, are made to be made again and are made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation report, A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future, identifies the fashion industry’s current take-make-dispose model as the root cause of its environmental problems and economic value loss, including:
Make Fashion Circular unites 60 key stakeholders, including fashion brands, municipalities, NGOs, and innovators behind a shared vision, to radically redesign the fashion industry. Projects to date include WearNext and the Jeans Redesign.
For the Jeans Redesign, Make Fashion Circular brought together over 80 denim experts from across the Denim industry, to co-developed a list of guidelines to ensure jeans can be made for a circular economy. Launched in 2019, it now brings together over 50 leading brands, who thereby commit to:
Make Fashion Circular brings together industry leaders including Burberry, Gap Inc., H&M Group, HSBC, Inditex, PVH and Stella McCartney as Core Partners and is made possible by Laudes Foundation, the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery and the MAVA Foundation.
Please see here for the full list of participants.
To create positive impact, we have to turn global ambitions for circular clothing into tangible action points that can be taken up by local actors”
- David Rogers, Head of International Resource Management at WRAP
Denmark & UK
WRAP, a charity working with governments, businesses, and communities to deliver practical solutions to improve resource efficiency.
WRAP aims to develop global goals for a circular clothing economy and facilitate their translation into national frameworks with measurable targets.
They focus on three long-term ambitions set out in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's vision of a circular economy for fashion:
1) Circular Design – Clothes are made to be made again
2) Circular Manufacture – Clothes are made from safe and renewable or recycled inputs
3) Circular Retail – Clothes are used more
There is an urgent need to address the catastrophic environmental impacts of Fast Fashion. The current clothing system is extremely inefficient. It is estimated that more than half of fast fashion produced is disposed of in under a year[1].
To shift to a sustainable textile industry will require a radical re-imagining of the current linear models. Many initiatives are already trying to combat this and drive a move to a circular economy – however, they all fall short.
Currently, there is no proven, coordinated way of delivering change that harnesses government involvement and industry leadership, connects existing initiatives, and holds them to account.
WRAP has an extensive track record of delivering change through the use of Voluntary Agreements. These have proven effective across multiple industry sectors and in multiple countries around the world and offer an alternative policy option to cumbersome, expensive, and inflexible legislation. WRAP has used its experience in developing these agreements to produce a ‘Blueprint’ to facilitate the successful delivery of national agreements across food and plastics.
Project partner WRI has complimentary experience in both metric setting and policy engagement which underpin the successful implementation of such agreements. With funding from the Laudes Foundation (formerly C&A Foundation), WRAP will work closely with other key players in the circular fashion space to establish an effective, replicable model for national Circular Clothing Action Plans.
Around April 2021, WRAP will launch a 1-year pilot in Denmark translating the global agenda into a national framework and drive its implementation together with in-country partners. The following steps are planned:
Map out existing circular clothing initiatives and define gaps
Develop global targets
Find an in-country partner and win the support of the national government
Build a steering committee with important local players from across the fashion supply chain
Define national framework in cooperation with local stakeholders
Develop governance structure and allocate funding
Agree on most impactful interventions and roadmap
Establish metrics, data collection method, and reporting standard
Run pilot in-country
Produce a Blueprint on how to set-up a Voluntary Agreement on Circular Fashion
Evaluate project results and disseminate achievements and lessons learned
A successful completion of the project will be expanded on two dimensions:
Extend project in Denmark until 2030
Share learning with the parallel agreement in the UK
Replicate the project in other countries
[1] Ellen Macarthur Foundation, A new Textiles Economy (2017) https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/publications/A-New-Textiles-Economy_Full-Report_Updated_1-12-17.pdf
WRAP (Leading partner)
WRI
In-country partners (TBC)