The Textiles Circularity Centre’s research has revealed that for people to adopt sustainability practices, the means to enact them must be embedded into our culture. Our research has therefore focused on designing the means for people, be they consumers, businesses, NGOS, local governments, to practice circular economy in place-based settings, such as on the high street. To this end, we have focused on SMEs and start-ups in fashion-apparel brands and designers, manufacturing, materials, repair/upcycle, waste collection, as well as local government and NGOs, as they are already active in local settings.

Our aim was to demonstrate a transformation pathway to establish a culture of circular economy for the UK apparel-textiles industry by adding environmental, economic, social, and technical value to biowaste as it flows from recycling of waste, production of textiles, to consumption and reuse of apparel.

Our approach was vision-directed, design-led, and highly interdisciplinary. We employed visioning to reframe fashion-apparel from the current global linear system of production and fast consumption, to a culture centred on care, prolonged use, community wellbeing and locality.
At the end of the book we present our research insights on the behavioural actions needed to establish a culture of circular economy in society to promote high reseuse & less consumption, the value and the flows of value that our solutions add to biowaste, and the related environmental impacts. We also indicate what the requirements for change in terms of technology, policy, economy, data and society would be for our circular solutions to be adopted.

The book concludes with our Design Manifesto for a circular economy.

This book marks the end of the Textiles Circularity Centre’s journey, and we hope that our research inspires others to address the core challenge of effecting a cultural transformation to grow the reuse sector in order to reduce the environmental impacts of apparel.