Resources & Publications

This report explores the key barriers and critical success factors for an effective market uptake of post-consumer recycled textiles and automated sorting technologies, such as the Fibersort, in the long term in North-West Europe. This report is the final publication of the Fibersort Interreg NWE project. These barriers and success factors are portrayed through case studies of organisations across the textiles value chain active in implementing solutions to enable a thriving end-of-use for textiles.

The Circular Jobs Initiative is working towards a positive transition to circularity for work and workers. The initiative is a knowledge centre that combines academic knowledge with practical piloting, working in collaboration with a network of stakeholders.

Through the lens of the initiative's three core pillars—skilling, quality of jobs and inclusivity—Jobs & Skills in the Circular Economy: State Of Play And Future Pathways provides an overview of how current labour market issues apply to the circular economy transition, the opportunities that circularity presents for the labour market and the challenges that need to be overcome to achieve a future labour market that enables people and the planet to thrive.

Learn more about the Circular Jobs Initiative.

The Fibersort project aims at realising the widespread implementation of the technology by validating it as a key value adding innovation to enable textile-to-textile recycling.

While post-consumer textiles are currently struggling to successfully find textile-to-textile recycling end-markets, this report explores existing and potential end-markets for PCT, sorted according to their characteristics, and assesses the potential of different business models for brands and manufacturers to successfully integrate recycled textiles.

This paper examines the association between circular strategies imposed by European cities on the attraction of greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) and the creation of circular gross employment through greenfield FDI. We utilise a recently developed database of circular strategies employed by local authorities in 43 European cities with information on greenfield FDI in these cities and other city characteristics for the years 2016–2017. We find that urban circular policies are positively and significantly associated with the attraction of greenfield FDI–generated employment, where the effect is stronger for regulatory and economic instruments compared to soft instruments.

Tracking the value of modular assets in a PaaS proposition is of utmost importance. It can improve circular decision making with regards to the cascading of components like refurbishing, re-using or recycling and improves predictive maintenance. In this report you will find the findings of the Community of Practice Tracking Value. The mission of this CoP was to tackle the complexities around tracking assets, with a focus on identity, location and condition of the assets. The relevant existing technologies have been explored and the financial and legal implications of tracking assets have been investigated.

The Circularity Gap Report 2020, launched in Davos, finds that the world is now only 8.6% circular. Of all the minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass that enter it each year just 8.6% are cycled back. This has fallen from 9.1% in the two years since our annual report was first launched in 2018. Today, for the first time ever, our global economy is consuming 100 billion tonnes of materials each year and circularity is stuck in reverse.

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About the Circularity Gap Report

Circle Economy has launched the first Circularity Gap Report in 2018 because we recognised the need for improved metrics to lead impactful action. The Report, which will be launched annually, will continue to provide insights into the circular state of the world and additionally focus on specific aspects of circularity. From launching the first global metric in 2018, the industry focus in 2019, to the country perspective in 2020. The focus will be on the topics Circle Economy feels are vital to drive action or where momentum is building. The main goal of the Global Circularity Gap Report is to provide key players that can implement the circular economy with the insights, data, knowledge and network to accelerate change.

In this case of Road-as-a-Service (RaaS) the Coalition Circular Accounting (CCA) has done a deep dive into the circular business model and the need for more guidance on applying accounting rules for a Circular Service Contact (CSC), in particular for a Road-as-a-Service agreement. Our main conclusion is that there is no necessity for adapting or fundamentally changing the accounting rules, but that we have to change our accounting perspective. In attracting capital, the ratios may change negatively, which require another risk assessment by financiers.

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The Fibersort project aims at realising the widespread implementation of the automated sorting technology by validating it as a key value adding innovation to enable textile-to-textile recycling.

While the challenges and opportunities of used textiles are increasingly in the spotlight of governments, industry, and civil society, considerable system changes are required to transition towards a circular economy for textiles. Throughout this report, policy recommendations are formulated showing the legislative, economic and soft instruments that regional, national and the European governments have at their disposal to allow the Fibersort, as well as other automated sorting technologies, to live up to their full potential.

The Fibersort project aims at realising the widespread implementation of the automated sorting technology by validating it as a key value adding innovation to enable textile-to-textile recycling.

While the challenges and opportunities of used textiles are increasingly in the spotlight of governments, industry, and civil society, considerable system changes are required to transition towards a circular economy for textiles. Throughout this report, policy recommendations are formulated showing the legislative, economic and soft instruments that regional, national and the European governments have at their disposal to allow the Fibersort, as well as other automated sorting technologies, to live up to their full potential. 

[cta link="https://www.nweurope.eu/media/8244/fibersort-52-policy-recommendations-20191030.pdf"]Read the Full Report[/cta][hr]

We are actively seeking textile collectors and sorters, recycling technologies, brands and retailers, and other circular textiles projects to join our team of collaborators.

[cta link="http://eepurl.com/duHwYz"]Be part of the change[/cta][hr]