World Circular Textiles Day Goes Live This Fall
About two years ago, during the pandemic, Worn Again Technologies, Circle Economy and Centre for Circular Design joined forces to create World Circular Textiles Day. Celebrated each year since on Oct. 8, the day is centered on the goal of full circularity by 2050.
For the first time this fall, the festivities will include live events in New York and London on Oct. 7. Lenzing is proud to be a signatory, and we’re looking forward to participating again in this important conversation around circularity.
Carved in Blue caught up with Cyndi Rhoades, founder of Worn Again Technologies, to hear about the plans for this year’s World Circular Textiles Day and what it will take to build a circular movement.
Carved in Blue: How has World Circular Textiles Day grown since you launched this initiative?
Cyndi: We launched WCTD in 2020 with 77 company and organizational signatories and have since grown to 144 signatories. They include stakeholders from across the circular value system, including retailers/brands, textile collectors/sorters, reuse and repair businesses, recycling innovators, supply chain producers and industry networks and facilitator organizations. Our ambition is to enlist the width and breadth of dedicated individuals, companies, organizations, cities and regions—all of whom are actively working and collaborating towards making circular textiles a reality.
Carved in Blue: What do you have planned for the World Circular Textiles Day live events in London and New York this year?
Cyndi: After launching in the depths of the pandemic, and following two years of Covid restrictions, we’re excited to be holding our first in-person WCTD event at The Conduit in London’s Covent Garden. Participation will also be possible via live stream. We’re also extremely pleased to introduce a live link to our WCTD New York City hub, courtesy of Lenzing.
The program will build on our tried-and-tested model where we report, reflect and celebrate progress across textiles circularity while also identifying what’s still needed to achieve the 2050 vision. We’ll do this by highlighting circular activities, which have been uploaded onto the WCTD Knowledge Hub (make sure you add your latest activities!), by sharing circular progress updates from our signatories and with pre-recorded interviews featuring some of the latest developments in circular textiles over the past year.
The live event will be held on Oct. 7 at 15.00-16.30GMT, due to Oct. 8 falling on a Saturday this year. To make sure you are kept in the loop on all developments, join the WCTD newsletter here.
Carved in Blue: One of the goals of this year’s WCTD is expanding the conversation beyond the industry. How are you working to connect with and engage consumers about textile circularity?
Cyndi: It’s clear that for circularity to really take off and become the norm, it needs to become a cultural movement with widespread engagement. And that means that as a concept, and in practice, the principles and multifaceted forms of circularity need to become more accessible, convenient and available to wider society. This year’s event will delve deep into how this is being done across the industry today, whether enough is being done and what else could drive behavior change towards circularity engagement, from buying less to increasing reuse and repair or returning unwanted clothing to textile banks.
Carved in Blue: The target of WCTD is full circularity by 2050. When you envision this future, what does it look like?
Cyndi: When we look at textiles circularity, we think about it in three strands: materials and planetary boundaries, products and services, and people. After the launch of WCTD in 2020, we enlisted our signatories to help shape a combined vision across these three areas. Collectively, we came up with this extended definition here. In short, we imagine full circularity to be a time when: shared textile resources, in the form of products and materials, are kept in continual circulation; virgin resources are replaced with circular and renewable materials, and nothing goes to landfill; and there is dignity, equity and equality, for the people involved in all parts of the circular value chain.
Carved in Blue: According to your roadmap, we’re still in the “innovation and R&D” years. What are you intending to accomplish by the end of this stage in 2025?
Cyndi: While the textiles Industry is still in the early years of circularity, most of the components to deliver circularity across materials, products and services, and people exist today and are at various stages of development and execution. But there is still a long way to go before all puzzle pieces are brought together and optimized into any semblance of a functioning and balanced system. We see 2025 as a seminal year for systems change, a key milestone when regional circular systems will start taking visible shape. For WCTD and what we intend to accomplish, our mission is to track and embolden circular textiles progress from now until 2050, as it’s happening. By 2025, our goal is to have captured the entirety of textiles circularity activities around the globe via the WCTD Knowledge Hub and to use these stories and data to motivate further collectivism to achieve full circularity before 2050.
Carved in Blue: Since the last WCTD, what progress has been made in circularity? And what further advancements would you like to see by WCTD 2023?
Cyndi: We’ve seen a dramatic uplift in reuse and rewear markets with companies like ThredUp, The RealReal and Vinted and reports that the resale market is growing 11 times faster than traditional retail. Mechanical recycling companies, like Recover, are expanding production facilities to regions like Bangladesh. And chemical recycling companies are teaming up with brands and post-consumer textile collectors to secure supply for inputs and commitments to buy outputs. Investment across all of these areas are skyrocketing. On the policy front, the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles was launched in March 2022, which will spark a wave of supportive legislation to drive change across a number of areas, including circular design requirements, digital product passports, extended producer responsibility rules for textiles, with economic incentives to make products more sustainable. For 2023, we want to see government and business action plans turning into implementation.