I'm excited to share a deep dive into the current landscape of circular fashion, written by Wendy Lau. How is policy, reporting and business tackling the environmental impacts of fast fashion, and is it getting results? Read on below ⬇️
Circular Roundup
Policy: Filter the Future is a coalition advocating for the introduction of ecotoxicity warnings on cigarette packs, helping put an end to toxic littering. Each cigarette is made up of more than 2,500 toxic substances,including arsenic, mercury, ammonia, heavy metals, lead, and nicotine (a pesticide). Many of these elements are also water-soluble and ecotoxic, meaning they spread easily in water and cause serious damage to biodiversity in our oceans, fresh water, soil, forests, and cities. 50,000-120,000 cigarette butts are improperly littered around the world every second.
FTF is demanding 3 changes to the European Tobacco Products Directive:
Expanding environmental messaging requirements on tobacco products, including direct printing on cigarette packs, roll-your-own packs, and individual cigarettes following the example of the recent Canadian legislation.
Plan a phase-out of plastic and non-plastic filters – and ban misleading messages about biodegradable filters.
Reinforce Extended Producer Liability provisions to ensure that tobacco producers bear the full costs of collection, clean-up, and environmental remediation.
Industry:Drax is in hot water for potential greenwashing over sustainability claims. Senior executives raised concerns internally about the validity of the energy company’s sustainability claims, while it publicly denied allegations that it was cutting down environmentally important “old-growth” forests in Canada to use as fuel. Drax has received more than £7bn in subsidies levied on household energy bills on the condition that the biomass pellets are made from waste or low-value wood from sustainable forests.
Research: New research from the European Environmental Agency (EEA) estimates that the circular economy could deliver an average reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 33%. Results from individual sectors, indicate that emissions from waste management could be reduced by an average of 52% (range: 9-88%); from construction by 48% (range: 15-99%); and from industry by 26% (range: 5-61%). Wide variation in results across studies makes it difficult to define a single, concrete estimate for mitigation potential. Instead, the recent studies on the circular economy and GHG reductions point to some key lessons, including improved waste management as low-hanging, combining upstream and downstream measures and focusing on climate-intensive materials and sectors with high material usage such as construction.
Action This 💡
Identify one high‑volume item your organisation already handles and set up a simple, low-cost take‑back loop for it. For a logistics company, this could be reusable shipping boxes; for a manufacturer, transportation crates; for a retailer, refillable bottles for personal‑care products. Choose an item that’s easy to collect and clean and create a clear return point (e.g., drop-off point, QR code). Track how many units you recover and how many purchases or waste pickups you avoid. Use the results to scale the loop to additional items.
This deep dive will explore the current business and political landscape of circular fashion, and how it relates back to the larger sustainability problem in the apparel industry.
The Current Circular Fashion Landscape
Policy: Current EPR legislation for textiles focuses on downstream and upstream efforts; fees finance the management of recycling, disposal, and reuse of textiles with its specific requirements varied by region. While both California and the EU incentivizes reuse of textiles, the EU takes a step further to adjust fees placed on producers based on the durability and sustainability of textiles, which encourages opportunities for companies to consider more circular and environmentally conscious apparel and textiles. California’s EPR will be fully implemented by July 1, 2030 with businesses earning less than $1 million in annual global revenue exempted; and all member states in the EU will need to transpose EPR rules into national law by April 17, 2028.
The map below outlines the status of EPR legislation for textiles globally. EU and California have since adopted a mandatory EPR structure for textiles, and the remaining countries’ status are the same.
Source: We need Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy for textiles to reduce fabric waste (The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2024)
Reporting: The EU’s CSRD and California’s SB 253 and SB 261 are mandating companies to quantify and report on their environmental impacts. When it comes to reporting on circularity impacts, the current emissions accounting guidance from the GHG Protocol unintentionally disincentivizes circularity practices. For example, the guidance does not account for the embedded carbon lost in incineration compared to the benefits of carbon retained from reusing and repairing products. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation advocates for revisions to the GHG Protocol’s methodology so it better reflects business activity aligned with the transition to a circular economy as the GHG Protocol plans on releasing updates to its guidance in 2027.
While not integrated in the GHG Protocol’s methodology, in November 2025, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and One Planet Network (hosted by UNEP) co-developed the Global Circularity Protocol (GCP), a global framework for measuring, managing and communicating an organization’s circular performance and its impacts. This framework is aligned with GRI, ISO 59020, ESRS, IFRS S1/S2 and the GHG Protocol to ensure consistency across sustainability reporting and won’t further clutter the sustainability alphabet soup.
Additionally, EPR legislation does require producers to report data on apparel quantities and weight in the market and end-of-life management.
Beyond mandatory reporting, brands, retailers, and manufacturers of apparel, footwear, and textile industry have been quantifying social and environmental performance metrics beyond carbon like water consumption using Cascale’s apparel industry standard Higg Index, a suite of five tools, to manage their supply chain comprehensively.
The Higg Product Module (PM) assesses the cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of consumer goods from the point of resource extraction to manufacturing, all the way through durability, care, and end of use. Once a material or product has reached its end of life and is recycled or refurbished, the impacts of recycling and refurbishment are included in the assessment.
Source: Cascale, formerly known as theSustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC)
Business: There are various levers businesses are starting to pull to reduce textile waste.
Resale can be brand-owned such as Patagonia’s Worn Wear in partnership with Archive, B2B such as with ThredUp’s Resale-as-a-Service platform free for businesses to collaborate with, and peer-to-peer like on eBay, DePop, Poshmark, and RealReal.
Rental serviceslike Nuuly and Rent the Runway have been becoming more popular for those thinking of temporary usages and trying different clothing without the commitment of buying them.
Recycling services like Reju, TerraCycle, FABSCRAP, Supercircle.
Repairservices are offered by brands like Levi’s, Arc'teryx, North Face, Patagonia, and Coach to extend the life of their products.
Innovation & design like upcycled clothing, Biomimicry Institute's Nature of Fashion initiative to incorporate natural fibers and regenerative materials to clothing. Slow fashion with high quality material to reduce wasteful consumption.
Donations to Goodwill, Salvation Army, and various thrift stores.
US tariffs as well as AI technology are dramatically shifting apparel sales outlook to be one of low growth. The uncertain economic outlook is impacting consumers to be more cost-conscious with their purchasing decisions, driving secondhand apparel to be an appealing add-on to companies' offerings, adapting to increased consumer appetite for affordable prices. Although this hasn't cannibalized sales of other clothing and serves as a waste diversion solution instead.
This raises concern, as a recent study from Yale University suggests that overconsumption of secondhand clothing can function as “fast fashion 2.0.” Purchasing used clothing does not necessarily reduce an individual’s consumption of new fast fashion and may, in fact, exacerbate fashion waste. Secondhand items are relatively inexpensive, consumers may be more likely to dispose of them quickly, morally justifying their behavior as sustainable, while continuing to purchase new clothing. At the core of this issue is the declining quality of garments, which accelerates the disposal of secondhand clothing and further contributes to the waste problem.
Advocacy for Circularity
There are various organizations and alliances like the Textile Exchange, Fashion for Good, Accelerating Circularity that are promoting a circular economy for fashion. Apparel companies looking to certify as a B Corp will also need to align practices with circularity to comply with B Lab’s new certification standards. Furthermore, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation compiled metrics for making the case for circular business models.
The next article of this three-part series will delve further into the challenges of circular fashion and consumer sentiment with sustainable purchasing behavior.
Wendy Lau is a sustainability professional and Bard MBA candidate driven by a commitment to building more circular and sustainable businesses. Her experience spans circularity implementation, emissions reduction, and corporate climate strategy, including working with TerraCycle as an account manager to advance recycling and circularity engagement across CPG and apparel brands, with CDP as a fellow to support corporate environmental disclosure, and with B Lab as a student researcher, where she developed a climate action case study for a certified B Corporation.
Towards a Sustainable and Circular Value Chain - Two UN Environment Programme toolbox resources outlining legislation around the world that is driving circularity, responsible use, and end-of-life management for textiles. Tailored to countries which have textile impacts at different parts of the value chain (production vs consumption).
What did you think of this edition of Circular Digest? If you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas for future content, reply to this email. 😊
See you next month!
Kayleigh
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