Stitch by stitch Australia is knotting stakeholders across its clothing industry on a ‘Seamless’ resilient circular economy path that prioritises social and environmental well-being together with economic prosperity, and more importantly to help transition the country to a circular economy by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050.
- Steered by the Australian Fashion Council (AFC), the Scheme Design Report, Milestone 3.4 for the National Clothing Product Stewardship Scheme (Seamless), details the why and how the continent country can together transform the industry into a circular economy by 2030.
- A circular clothing industry by 2030 would be one where responsible stewardship and citizenship are embedded across the lifecycle from clothing design and production, through to consumption and recirculation.
And, transitioning from a linear model to a circular one would necessitate systematic and seismic change across the value chain which can only be tackled with industry-wide collaboration, as well as consumer behaviour change. Funds raised by Seamless will be put towards four priority areas:
- Circular design: Incentivising clothing design that is more durable, repairable, sustainable, and recyclable.
- Circular business models: Scaling new revenue models for reuse, repair, remanufacturing, rental, and other services that prolong the life of clothing and create new value while lowering resource use.
- Closing the loop: Significantly expanding existing clothing collection and sorting practices for effective reuse, and enabling clothing to be recycled into new high-value products and materials.
- Citizen behaviour change: Encouraging changed practices in the community around clothing acquisition, use, care, and disposal.
The Roadmap to Clothing Circularity informs and educates all stakeholders across the clothing value chain, inspires businesses and citizens to act quickly and aligns with the Australian government’s sustainability goals.
The Seamless objective
- Achieve clothing circularity by 2030: Provide industry with a pathway towards clothing circularity in line with the Federal Government’s commitment to transition Australia to a circular economy by 2030.
- Address challenges that no business can tackle on its own: Enable industry collaboration to achieve environmental and social improvements in line with consumer demand, as well as government policy and regulatory requirements.
- Decouple economic growth from resource use: Decouple economic performance from virgin resource use, transition to renewable energy and materials, and create resilient circular value chains
- Support just transformation: Ensure economic and social well-being are preserved during the transition towards circularity.
- Improve responsible stewardship and citizenship: Empower industry and consumers to take greater responsibility for the actions they take as they produce and consume clothing.
The goal: By 2030, how Australians acquire, use and dispose of their clothing will be very different. While it may look the same on the surface, the wardrobe of the future will represent responsible stewardship and citizenship from clothing design and production, through to consumption and recirculation.
- The aim is to ensure that wardrobes will contain fewer clothes, most made to last from renewable fibre.
- Many items will be enjoying a second life, or will have found their way into the wardrobe from new sources like rental.
- It will be standard practice for less durable items (such as underwear) to be made from recycled materials.
The context: On average, every Australian buys 56 items of clothing yearly, most of which are made from non-sustainable, non-durable materials. Also, Australia has no systematic resources for the collection of unwearable clothing.
- The Australian clothing industry manufactures and imports over 1.4 billion units of new clothing into Australia every year. Clothing waste has become one of the largest contributors to Australia's waste crisis, with more than 200,000 tonnes of clothing ending up in Australian landfill every year.
- As a result, clothing waste has become one of the largest contributors to Australia’s waste problem. The route to address the issue is that which recognises that the fashion and clothing brands who place clothes on the market are responsible for the entire life of that garment, from design through to recycling or sustainable disposal.
The team and funding: The pioneering brands that are the foundation members of Seamless are BIG W, David Jones, Lorna Jane, Rip Curl, R.M. Williams and The Iconic. Each organisation will play an important part in the 12-month transition phase while Seamless is established.
- This report forms one of a number of key consortium outputs, alongside the Global Scan Report, the Clothing Data Report, the Roadmap to Clothing Circularity in Australia and the Seamless Scheme Design full report, which will inform the work of the Product Stewardship Organisation (PSO) as well as the Product Stewardship Scheme (Seamless) members who will take forward this work from 2024. The authors of the report include Allan P; Kneller C; Payne A; and Street P.
- Funded by the Commonwealth Government’s National Product Stewardship Investment Fund. this report has been written by the National Clothing Product Stewardship Scheme Consortium (the Consortium), led by the Australian Fashion Council (AFC), with Charitable Recycling Australia, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Sustainable Resource Use (SRU), and WRAP Asia Pacific.
