Transforming the Textile Industry: Partnering for Circularity

The textile sector is interconnected and globalized. To meaningfully reduce the sector’s environmental impacts, the hotspots along the entire value chain - meaning areas of high environmental impact and thus where improvements are needed - need to be addressed. But, those areas causing most of the negative impacts and where improvements are most needed might be outside the immediate control of a small textile business. For example, a fabric manufacturer might not feel it can influence the farming practices of its cotton supplier. This is where partnerships play a key role in enabling life cycle thinking—an approach that looks beyond individual stages, like manufacturing, to consider the full range of a product’s impacts across its entire life cycle. By bringing together diverse insights from across the value chain, partners help develop solutions with environmental, social and economic benefits.