Circularity

Guatemala’s largest secondhand clothing retailer, Megapaca, sits at the heart of a national reuse system that challenges prevailing ideas about circular fashion. From ropa cruda flows to fibre recovery through NovaFiber, its model shows how commercial scale, redistribution networks and data-backed transparency can extend garment lifespans and deliver circular results where public systems remain fragile.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Adobe have created Refashion, a software system that lets users design garments that can be disassembled and reassembled into different clothing items. The tool demonstrates how digital design and modular construction can reduce waste and enable sustainable fashion through reconfigurable patterns and smart interfaces.

In Guatemala’s crowded ropa cruda markets, women dominate the trade, running stalls that support households in an economy where informality exceeds 70%. Surveys reveal their ownership, participation and wages outpace national averages, forcing a reconsideration of how circular value is defined — and who benefits when discarded garments gain a second life.

The textile industry’s circular transition hinges on how materials move between loops — from repair and reuse to remanufacture and recycling. A new mapping of “cascading circularity” reveals how companies relink fibres, technologies, and policies to extend value chains and slow waste flows, offering clues to where the system still breaks down.

Accelerating Circularity has unveiled a white paper revealing how trims, adhesives, and labels block progress in textile-to-textile recycling. The Toward Circular Systems for Trims and Ignored Materials (CSTIM) report examines overlooked components that disrupt fibre recovery, outlining solutions for scalable sorting, preprocessing, and design-for-disassembly—calling brands, recyclers, and manufacturers to align on standards for genuine circular systems.

Guatemala’s secondhand clothing industry is frequently portrayed abroad as little more than dumping. Field surveys show otherwise: almost nine in ten imports are reused, while waste remains limited. Unsorted ropa cruda powers markets, creates work, and sustains women traders. As new rules emerge, the fight is over who defines—and controls—circularity.

The Netherlands is pursuing ambitious circularity targets through extended producer responsibility, aiming to raise textile reuse and recycling rates while driving systemic reform. A collective framework is helping coordinate producers, recyclers, and innovators, even as legislative pressure grows and cross-border harmonisation efforts intensify under forthcoming EU regulations. In this context, Sekhar Lahiri, Director of Stichting UPV Textiel, discusses the challenges and opportunities shaping the transition.

The circular economy is often seen as fashion’s path to sustainability, with innovations in recycling and AI promising reduced waste. Yet new research warns these solutions may backfire. By fuelling increased production and consumption, circular strategies could intensify fashion’s environmental toll unless carefully managed through taxes, policies, and behavioural change.

Sweden’s secondhand clothing sector is growing, yet campaigners argue outdated VAT rules keep reuse expensive and fragile. Across Europe, governments are testing tax reforms to promote repairs and resale, while the EU readies wider sustainability regulations. The debate highlights whether fiscal design will entrench fast fashion or enable circular fashion to flourish.

ReHubs has announced a comprehensive strategy to industrialise textile circularity across Europe by 2032, establishing systematic coordination between recyclers, manufacturers, and brands. The alliance plans to mobilise substantial investment through integrated supply chain management and strategic financing orchestration across European markets.