Circular Fashion: Going Beyond Sustainability

“Circular fashion” is a phrase thrown around these days like an on-trend pair of shoes. What does it mean? Is it entirely new or simply a rebrand of “sustainable”? Is it only an idea, or are companies actually doing circular fashion right now? 

Punchline first: it’s new, and not just a sustainability rebrand; and yeah, companies are doing it. Let me explain.

Wait, hasn’t sustainable fashion been around for a while?

Yes, and this movement helped deliver fashion with less impact, and expand our choices to buy products more responsibly. It also helped put the pressure on large brands and retailers to be more accountable. The pioneers -- like Patagonia and REI-- took it further. While some brands simply reacted to pressure from the public, these pioneers pushed themselves to improve by their own standards and set the industry tone for how a truly responsible company could operate, like enacting life-cycle transparency (Patagonia), or used product resale (REI). But big isn’t always bad either, and less obvious players -- like VF Corp and Kohl’s -- quietly did some good work, like investing significantly in renewable energy (Kohl’s) and educating consumers on environmental impacts (VF’s Timberland brand).

Fashion brands, factories, and retailers also formed industry blocs to advance sustainability; they joined groups like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (founded in 2009), Global Fashion Agenda (2016), and Apparel Impact Institute (2017), and pursued standards like the Better Cotton Initiative (2005) and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (2011). There were activist organizations that lit a fire under our industry, such as Greenpeace’s “Detox My Fashion” campaign, launched in 2011. These sustainable fashion groups advanced concepts like better material sourcing, reduced packaging, and improved recycling. All good things! 

But there’s still a problem, right? 

These are significant achievements. But the fashion industry is still fundamentally unsustainable. Buckle your science seatbelt, ‘cause this is going to get deep. Synthetic fibers require petroleum extraction, use energy, and shed microplastics into the sea; natural fibers are thirsty, take up arable land, and still require petrochemical inputs. Fabric processing, such as dyeing and finishing, consumes water and releases harmful industrial pollutants. In many categories, like footwear and outerwear, natural and synthetic materials are glued together, rendering them inseparable for recycling or composting. Manufacturing uses fossil-based energy and can put minimally empowered workers at significant risk. Finished products, often briefly used, languish in landfills or are sent to incinerators to release their embodied carbon to the skies. None of this is sustainable for very long. 

Sustainable fashion is a slowing of the pace of harm, but to reverse direction requires building a circular economy for fashion..

What is a circular economy?

I used to work in corporate sustainability, and when we met in our industry groups, we discussed and demonstrated many ideas to advance sustainability -- with generally good intentions. But the unspoken elephant in the room was that consumption -- the driving force of the linear economy -- still underpinned our work. We assured each other that if we took market share from our higher-carbon competitors, the earth would benefit. To twist that classic Gordon Gecko line: growth is good.

The circular economy questions this linear, “take-make-waste” model of consumption. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines “circular economy” based on three principles:

• Design out waste and pollution

• Keep products and materials in use

• Regenerate natural systems

Our conception of a circular economy is based on these three principles, although we also make sure to also consider its effect on people, ensuring an inclusive circular economy. 

So then, what is circular fashion?

Circular fashion says: how can we achieve comfort, protection, self-expression, athletic performance, attractiveness, and all of fashion’s benefits, without its destructiveness of material conversion, energy use, and worker harm? In short, we need to change the way clothes and accessories have been traditionally designed and used.

We must aim to:

• Use more safe, recycled, recyclable materials from non-virgin sources

• Make items that are built to last, are repairable, and are separable for eventual recycling

• Create services and systems that allow items to be kept in use by more than one person

• Consider the wellbeing of all of the farmers, workers, and other people that the product touches along its circular path

Circular fashion is a systems problem that will be powered by business innovation, technological application, and customer behavior change, and must be solved by industry professionals using these tools.

Take, for example, Remake’s awesome #NoNewClothes pledge, which all of us at Eleven Radius have signed. How can a fashion brand support such a pledge? Only one that has embraced circularity -- breaking the link between profitability and new clothing sales -- can participate in such campaigns to shift consumer behavior. For example, customers of EILEEN FISHER who take the pledge can shop at EILEEN FISHER Renew, the company’s clothing take-back and reuse program.

We need a behavioral shift not just from customers, but from all the people involved. This is a moment for the fashion industry to  look into the mirror, stop waiting for customer outrage and proactively take responsibility. We need new, innovative business models to prove that circular fashion is both better value for the customer and still profitable for the brand, like Recurate’s peer-to-peer resale platform or THE GUESTLIST’s Cashmere Spa sweater refurbishment service. We also need new technologies to enable transparency and loop-closing, such as remanufacturing company Recircled’s crazy ideas and Zyosh’s microplastics-metering labels. We even need to rethink our channels and distribution, like Nudie Jeans’ denim repair desks in every one of their retail stores and reverse-logistics for product take-back that Cycleon is pioneering.

How do we get there?

We need new ways of measuring success. The old, linear economy brands tend to measure new clothing sales. But what does success mean for a circular brand? Should they aim to take back 10% or half or ALL of their own products after the first sale? Should they try to get purchase volumes of recycled fibers to the point where it’s at-cost relative to virgin? Should they strive to make their shoes so that all of the components can be separated for recycling or composting, as Suggies does?

Take the seemingly straightforward metric of the carbon footprint. Should a company’s footprint be measured as an carbon intensity -- that is, how many kilograms of carbon per dollar of revenue or per employee -- or in absolute emissions terms? The practices of sustainability might suggest measuring by intensity: as long as our CO2/$ is better than the average, the world wins. Circular fashion takes responsibility for the emissions of the whole fashion ecosystem, and says: we have to get the absolute emissions of the whole industry down, starting with our own value chain.

Circular fashion is a systems view of the industry, rather than a reductionist’s view. This calls for a comprehensive framework for circular fashion… but that’s a subject for another day. Here’s today’s bottom line: circular fashion is the natural evolution of sustainable fashion into something that will require all of us to change our behavior and create a better future.