World Circular Textiles Day 2023: What’s next?

On 5 October 2023 the organisers of World Circular Textiles Day (WCTD) welcomed circular pioneers from around the world to reflect on and celebrate sustainable and circular advancements in the textiles and garment industry as part of its annual celebration.

WCTD was founded in 2020 by Rebecca Earley and Kate Goldsworthy, co-founders of the The Centre for Circular Design at UAL, in collaboration with Gwen Cunningham and Cyndi Rhoades, of Circle Economy and Worn Again Technologies, respectively. Three years on, WCTD is supported by over 160 signatories including the British Fashion Council and H&M.

WCTD 2023 themes

This year’s WCTD took place in London. Themes included:

• how circularity is perceived and tackled in different regions
• challenges and opportunities in the emerging global space
• successes and milestones in circularity over the past year
• the overarching impact that research undertaken at institutions like UAL and WCTD is having across the globe through new knowledge
• fresh data and novel mechanisms.

The team reflected on a trip to Indonesia earlier this year in partnership with Asia Pacific Raylon and Rantai Tekstil Lestari (one of Indonesia’s 8 textile associations). The purpose of the trip was to visit producers and educational institutions, meet with South East Asian industry stakeholders (such as the Singapore Fashion Council) and government officials, and workshop a roadmap together with 55 industry leaders. The team discussed other successes around the globe, such as the opening of Debrand’s new textiles recycling headquarters in Canada and Wear Forward’s circular activities week hosted in mid-October in the Philippines.

The importance of collective action

Caitrin Watson, Director of Sustainability at SHEIN delivered a panel on regional perspectives on circularity from around the lifecycle of raw material to post-use with other textile industry leaders.

“We represent different parts of the circular supply chain, from fibre to brand and on to collector and sorter. There are different segments between us in the chain and I think being able to talk to each other is really important,” says Caitrin Watson. “Collective action is the only way you can create an actual circular economy, after hundreds, if not thousands of years under a linear economy.”

Ongoing projects

Starting last year with the United Nations, work on creating a roadmap towards a fully circular textiles and garment industry by 2050 continued at this year’s event.

The 3D Global Mapping Project is a data visualisation tool created in collaboration between Holititon, a think tank, and WCTD’s Knowledge Hub to visualise circular initiatives taking place around the world. The Knowledge Hub is a space for researchers, institutions and entrepreneurs to enter information about circular advancements and activities in materials, products and services, and people and society.

So far, Holition and the Knowledge Hub’s team of 84 global mappers have captured 634 individual cases of circular textiles activity across 74 countries. Cases include Usha Yarns strategic partnership with Birla Cellulose to produce recycled yarn; France launching its bonus scheme to incentivise consumers to repair clothing and shoes to reduce landfill waste; and COS partnering with the re-commerce behavioural insights lab run by Visa to better understand how consumers can be helped in engaging with a circular economy.

At the event, the WCTD team introduced the WCTD Toolkit, launching online that same day. The toolkit, has been created as a simple how-to guide for organisations, companies, institutions and individuals around the world to host and develop their own WCTD events. The toolkit provides a framework to support a range of activities for stakeholders in different contexts under the shared goal for circularity in the textiles and garment industry, globally, by 2050.

• Find out more about WCTD 2023