Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In the face of rapidly growing sustainability challenges, pressure is mounting on businesses to decouple production from virgin resources, reduce waste and phase-out pollution. The Circular Economy (CE) is important for addressing resource efficiency within the textiles sector. In a CE for textiles, clothes would be used more, made to be recycled, and made from safe and renewable inputs. Textiles-to-textiles (T-T) recycling is a key component of a circular textiles industry yet represents only 1 % of global textiles production. This paper sets out to answer how a closed-loop system for recycling post-consumer textiles (PCT) can be scaled. Whilst T-T recycling is a rapidly emerging industry, there is a lack of clarity on the enabling conditions needed to scale significantly throughout the value chain. By means of semi-structured interviews with practitioners participating in textiles CE activities, a holistic analysis of the barriers and enablers at all stages of the value chain has been conducted. The paper concludes with practical recommendations addressing each T-T supply chain actor. It makes an important contribution to understanding how actors in the circular value chain, policymakers and convening bodies can act in concert to successfully scale a system for collecting and recycling PCT.
Authors: Fiona Charnley, Ruth Cherrington, Florian Mueller, Ajay Jain, Cherie Nelson, Saskia Wendland, Sonia Ventosa
Institutions: University of Exeter, DNV (Germany), University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,520
Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Award: G1922507599
OpenAlex ID: W4392935918