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Blog 23

08 AUG 2022

The word circularity has been thrown around in discussions about sustainability, but I’ve never fully conceptualised its meaning. As my graduation project must be a sustainable one, I wanted to figure out what circularity in fashion truly means. The Business of Fashion interviewed Ellen MacArthur (of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation) about circularity which I figured would be a good source. I wrote my notes based on my understanding of what the interview was about, and what I learned from it. 

 

Circular design is built on 3 principles: the elimination of waste, keeping products and materials in use as long as possible, and the regeneration of natural systems. All of this powered by renewable energy will essentially create a lasting foundation for any economy to sustain long-term. Design plays a key role here, in ensuring from start to finish (business model to product to distribution) that something lasting is built. 

 

In regards to the climate crisis, alot of solutions that people talk about is changing the type of energy we use, rather than how we use it. Ellen states that the way we consume energy is equally as important as it accounts for 45% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and over 90% of biodiversity loss. An ideal product is designed to produce no waste and is circulated for as long as necessary before being reworked back into the system. Then, out of that,it or the profit it generates is put towards regenerating natural resources. It’s ideal because the design of the system contributes back to the earth throughout its operation. 

 

She believes that we do have the technology and creativity to implement far more circular systems than we are seeing, but circularity is simply not a priority. Obviously, because fashion brands have many partners, circularity can’t just be a one-company issue. True change has to stem from industry-wide effort (or at least a significant part of it). There’s no point investing all research and development into making the most sustainable product when it can no longer be utilised after its “death”. Essentially, true circularity must have collaboration. 

 

Business models usually adopt a linear business approach, whereby a brand takes a material, makes a product, and gets a profit when they sell it. Non-linear business approaches took off during the pandemic for businesses like clothing rental platforms. To achieve circularity, we need to break away from a dependence on finite resources so the brands’ economic growth doesn't depend on it, therefore ensuring that not just the product is sustainable, but the business model is as well. The current system fashion runs on isn’t sustainable; things like a growing population coupled with finite resources and the climate crisis is extremely foretelling of that fact. 

 

The current state of markets is what Ellen describes as “a race to the bottom”, which is the competition to lower prices for affordability. What’s ideal, in her terms, is “a race to the top”, which is defined as building and designing better, changing the system, increasing access to resources (for brands, and ideally a non-monopolistic one) and for consumers, and most importantly, to participate in the solution (guilt cannot power change in the long-term). She emphasizes that for all this to happen, there needs to be systemic change in the whole industry, not just within one. For example, the plastic packaging used to deliver inventory to stores isn’t part of the fashion industry but is part of the waste it creates. 

 

There also come the question which is what happens to a successful circular business model in a highly competitive, profit-driven economy? Would that business model end up creating more waste as it's essentially exploited? That could happen, but Ellen also points out a similar case within the food production industry, where big retailers compete with nature-positive food. From the perspective of a customer, this can actually be a good thing; because it takes the stress away from making that decision. Maybe they don’t know what exactly a nature-positive food is, or how it impacts the environment, but they can understand that the selection before them is good for the environment. She suggests that a similar thing is starting to occur within the fashion industry with circularity. 

 

It’s incredibly important to consider where or how your product can be utilised, even as waste. The difficulty with designing a circular product is that every partner involved has to be considered. There is a clear criteria on what a sustainable product is, but its incredibly complex to put into motion with differing laws and regulations across the locations of your customer base. 

 

Barriers:

  • Need for mindset change

  • Opportunity to communicate in a different way (transparency, making it understandable)

  • Challenges in material science

 

An interesting thing I learned was that I realised I had been thinking about circularity very narrowly, from the point of the product. I was more concerned with the materials and sourcing, while being less concerned over designing a system (for example, delivery) that would consume energy as efficiently as possible. I did understand that circularity would take an industry-wide effort, and the podcast put into perspective that the industry I was imagining was actually larger than I thought. I found it interesting when she mentioned the decoupling of businesses and finite resources (start of product lifespan) and the consideration of what happens to a product when it can no longer be used (end of lifespan). 

 

In my brain, I associated circularity and sustainably interchangeably, so my idea of circularity was mainly sustainable sourcing of biodegradable materials, or reinvigorating a product from its death. It hadn’t occured to me that collaboration would play such a big part in this, because the product could also be recycled in another industry. From my perspective, as a small business owner for the project, this is complex because this would mean collaborations outside the industry, which would be hard for smaller businesses to do as they often don’t have those sorts of connections. The podcast left me with a wider perspective of circularity and more considerations to ponder on as I begin conceptualizing my project.

 

References

What is Fashion
Circularity?

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