Welcome to March's edition of Circular Digest! Unfortunately I have been out sick so thank you for your patience as I get this to you on the last day of the month.
I'm excited to share a deep dive into the challenges and barriers for both consumers and companies in making fashion more circular, written by Wendy Lau. Read on below ⬇️
Although PPWR does not establish a PFAS ban, it sets maximum concentration levels. PPWR does not differentiate between intentionally added and unintentionally present PFAS.
All lightweight plastic carrier bags (including compostable or biodegradable bags) are banned. Only exemptions are if such bags are needed for hygiene purposes or provided as sales packaging for loose food to prevent food waste.
Manufacturers need to demonstrate that the design of reusable packaging meets the minimum number of rotations requirement. Closed-loop reuse systems with system operators must report on the number of rotations for each individual reusable packaging, or an average estimation if the calculation for each individual reusable packaging is not feasible.
Industry: The industry is seeing a significant pullback on plastic commitments as Unilever and LyondellBasell both scaled back their 2025/2030 goals, citing high costs and 'market realities'. While Unilever softened its virgin plastic reduction targets amid Greenpeace criticism over massive production of non-recyclable plastic sachets (estimated at 1,700 per second), LyondellBasell slashed its 2030 recycled polymer goal by 60%, signaling a broader shift where financial discipline is currently outpacing sustainability timelines across the value chain. Critics claim the industry should be prioritising high-scale reuse and refill models over material swaps and reycled content targets.
Research: Ellen MacArthur Foundation's new research has highlighted the value of paper as a solution to flexible plastic packaging pollution. Tackling small-format flexible plastic packaging, like wrappers and sachets, is a key systemic barrier to eliminating plastic waste and pollution. Flexibles account for ~80% of plastic packaging entering oceans and have some of the lowest recycling rates globally. Paper packaging alternatives could play a role in reducing flexible packaging waste and pollution as they have the potential to be recyclable (and recycled in practice with the right collection systems) as well as biodegradable, if they end up in the environment. To avoid replacing one problem with another, paper alternatives should be responsibly sourced and produced, meet technical, economic and consumer needs, be recycable locally, avoid hazardous chemicals and fit within a broader, socially inclusive circular economy strategy.
Action This 💡
To truly progress circularity, step 1 is understanding the material flows across your entire value chain. Whether you're focusing on plastics, textiles or a mix of material resources, map where these materials are used, upstream, within your operations, downstream, through to end-of-life management. This comprehensive view will help you identify hotspots, risks and opportunities to make your business more circular.
Circular Fashion: Are Consumers Actually Willing to Pay More for Sustainable Clothing?
With Wendy Lau
Clothing that is more sustainable typically comes at a price premium to fund initiatives such as responsible sourcing, ethical labor practices, and investing in circular take-back programs. While numerous sources like McKinsey’s survey indicates a large majority of consumers considers the use of sustainable materials to be an important purchasing factor for fashion brands, and are open to repairing and keeping their fashion items for longer, is this being actually reflected in their purchasing decisions? What are the main barriers both consumers and companies are facing to incorporate circularity into their purchasing decisions and business model?
Consumer Sentiment and Barriers to Purchasing Sustainable Fashion Brands
According to Mintel’s 2025 global research, over half of UK, German, and US consumers pay attention to sustainability and eco-friendly claims when purchasing apparel. In addition, they generally believe that a sizable portion of the responsibility for sustainability in fashion lies with businesses. For Chinese consumers, sustainable fashion is about more than just the environment, but it also needs to include personal wellbeing and family values.
However, consumers find it difficult to navigate what fashion pieces are sustainable as brands have varying levels of transparency leading to brand skepticism of greenwashing. In addition, consumers across the US, UK, and Germany generally believe that a sizable portion of the responsibility for sustainability in fashion lies with businesses, making sustainability not just a responsibility of the consumer but also of the brands themselves.
Beyond sustainability, there are other factors that play a larger role in consumers’ purchasing decisions. Price prevails as the priority leading consumers to cautious spending behavior. Furthermore, over 60% of younger millennials in the UK returned items they had purchased in the last three months which adds to the amount of textiles ending up in landfills and of consumers’ cost-saving trends. A 2024 research study affirms that high prices, skepticism and lack of knowledge remain to be the main barriers for sustainable consumption with environmental concerns playing a secondary role in their purchasing decision of fashion pieces.
In McKinsey’s 2020 survey, they also found style, comfort, quality, and functionality playing another major role in purchasing decisions, making practicality a significant consideration.
Consumer Sentiment on Sustainability in Fashion (McKinsey, 2020)
Circular Economy Challenges in Fashion
The Global Fashion Agenda, Reverse Resources, and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) is leading a Circular Fashion Partnership (CFP) with over 20 major global fashion brands, 17 recyclers, 43 textile and garment manufacturers. Through CFP’s work and research, they have found the major challenges existing across companies to promote circularity within fashion are:
Formalizing the informal waste management sector - in Bangladesh, the leading country of apparel manufacturing, has a large informal network of players utilizing textile waste as its own market. Formalizing this informal sector can drive value towards recycling, circularity of apparel, and transparent supply chain.
Value lost from current waste - much of textile waste in manufacturing countries like Bangladesh downcycles cotton through incineration into energy, an expensive endeavor that does not consider the alternative opportunities that cotton waste could have turned into.
Chicken and egg marketplace - the need to scale capacity but cannot scale without demand. Demand can’t be generated without capacity. There needs to be enough infrastructure for collecting and sorting textiles post-use.
Standardize sustainability labeling and definitions - unclear labeling makes it hard for consumers to utilize this effectively as part of their purchasing decisions.
Not only that, business models encourage more clothing sales rather than repurposing and reusing materials for new clothing and even slow fashion. Even with various brands implementing circular business models including resale and rentals, these outlets typically generate lower profit margins than new product sales.
Lastly, oil subsidies for plastic materials usage in clothing further drives fashion brands to continue to use lower quality materials in their clothing. While recycled polyester (rPET) do exist and are increasingly being incorporated into clothing, it is of lower quality and continues to release microplastics and microfibers with each standard home washing, marking plastic in textile circularity more as a temporary rather than long-term sustainable solution.
Now what?
While this article uncovers the many challenges both consumers and companies are facing with circular and sustainable fashion, the next article will highlight the opportunities circularity still poses and various innovative solutions that are being implemented across companies to drive forward a more sustainable and circular future.
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.
Scaling Circularity by Global Fashion Agenda - Lessons learned from from the Circular Fashion Partnership or building pre-competitive collaborations to scale upstream circular fashion systems. From scaling up recycling to formalising the informal waste management sector.
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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