We all know the statistics: Fashion and textiles account for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, consume 93 billion cubic meters of water, and generate 92 million tons of waste each year. Yet only 1% of textiles are recycled.
Change, however, won’t come from recycling technologies alone, but from a full system redesign.
On a recent Environmental Law Institute People, Places, Planet discussion, Mark Sumner, head of textiles at climate action NGO WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), and Sarah Morley, strategic engagement manager at WRAP Americas, examined what it will take to embed circular thinking throughout the entire value chain—not just at a product’s end of life.
Durability’s Competitive Advantage
WRAP sees durability as a cornerstone of achieving its 2030 targets. Durable garments don’t just stay in circulation longer—they can also displace new purchases. “We’re applying a bit of a throttle to the linear [take-make-waste] model. So that’s an important standalone picture for durability,” said Sumner.
WRAP’s Durability Accelerator, a global program that helps fashion brands and SMEs measure, improve and benchmark clothing longevity, also seeks to better understand consumer behavior. In examining why people dispose of still-wearable garments, WRAP found that consumers assign different values to different types of fashion products. It also found that durability isn’t necessarily linked to price, fiber composition or even fabric weight, making it difficult for consumers to “reliably identify how durable the products they purchase will be.”
WRAP argues the industry needs a recognized durability standard with metrics backed by independent testing. Brands that can demonstrate—and validate—durability not only build consumer trust and prepare for emerging regulations, but also create products that offer consumers long-term value through resale.
Europe is already promoting durability through policy initiatives such as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).
Circularity’s Product Development Problem
Circularity is often talked about as an end-of-life issue, but like durability, it begins with design and product development.
WRAP’s circular design program is built around four pillars: reducing material impacts, optimizing resources, designing for longevity and designing for recovery.
“80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage. So that’s a critical opportunity for change. If you can design clothes with their entire life cycle in mind, you can make a really large impact,” said Sumner.
Effective design is also a full value chain responsibility involving sourcing, manufacturing and supply chain partners. It can’t be dictated by “designers sitting in fashion offices in New York or London.”
“Once we get our head around that, it allows us to start thinking about how to provide knowledge and expertise for the whole supply chain to make the right choices,” Sumner said.
WRAP also works with companies to help shift them from the “take-make-waste” model to a truly circular one.
“Beyond working on circular design, we also promote new business models like resell and repair,” said Morley. “We’ll take a look at a company’s business model and offer opportunities to either improve their business or validate their environmental benefits.”
Pre-Competitive Collaboration
Circularity will never be achieved by individual companies acting alone. It requires pre-competitive collaboration among brands, manufacturers, recyclers, charities, governments and researchers.
While voluntary, WRAP calls the UK Textiles Pact the “engine room for innovation,” demonstrating how shared targets, common measurement tools and collaborative innovation can accelerate progress toward sustainability and circularity.
Despite good intentions, system dynamics remain a barrier.
The global textile industry is highly complex, with supply chains and business models that have evolved over centuries. As a result, even promising innovations are not always viable or scalable within legacy systems.
“Frankly, what we’ve seen is that many of these innovations just fail because they just can’t connect with the system,” said Sumner. “I’m not saying that the system never changes, but we should be thinking about how when innovations come in, we get an incremental shift and change to allow the system to start doing things in a more environmentally and socially aware way.”
Textile Waste to Textile Value
Reframing “textile waste” as “textile value” is important in this system-wide rethink, and language matters.
“As an environmental NGO, we don’t talk about waste reduction for textiles. We talk about maximizing the value of post-consumer textiles,” said Sumner. “We know if you can get that value proposition created, then you’ll get more and more innovators going.”
WRAP is developing model resolutions that city councils and mayors can adopt to better reframe textile waste, and Morley pointed to the food industry’s success with more effective language. “You don’t want to rescue food waste, you want to rescue food surplus,” she said.
Policy will be the ultimate catalyst, and lawmakers are increasingly supporting circular textiles through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation. In Europe, EPR frameworks outline durability requirements and support investments in collection, repair and recycling infrastructure. California’s SB 707 is an important domestic example, placing responsibility on producers to manage—and fund—textile collection and recycling systems.
Consumers’ Intent-Action Gap
Mention fast fashion, and cheap, disposable goods instantly come to mind. But WRAP reframed the issue as one of consumer behavior. Viewed through that lens, even luxury shoppers who insist they “never shop fast fashion” often follow the same behavior—continually buying new designer garments despite overflowing closets. For both mass-market and luxury consumers, the issue is ultimately one of overconsumption and underutilization.
Another intent-action gap surrounds sustainable shopping. “A woman might feel like her shopping is really green, but there will be moments, like a special event, when such considerations go out the window,” said Sumner.
The solution, he said, is to make sustainable shopping—whether purchasing for a special occasion or trying to sell or donate clothing—”easy and frictionless.”
