Is fashion on the cusp of a circular reinvention?
Why the fashion landscape could look dramatically more circular five years from now.
With garment waste still accumulating in landfills and ultra-fast fashion brands gnawing at established players’ market share, the sector appears very far from decoupling revenue from new production. And yet, recent data and industry initiatives suggest the fashion landscape could look dramatically more circular five years from now.
Earlier this year, CSO Futures published a report taking stock of the fashion sector’s (painfully slow) sustainable transformation: in 2023, less than 1% of fibres used in apparel manufacturing came from post-industrial and post-use recycled textiles, while the production of virgin fossil-based synthetic fibres rose from 67 million metric tonnes in 2022 to 75 million metric tonnes in 2023.
