EON and Accelerating Circularity have released an ‘Industry-Aligned Action Plan’ which explores how fashion brands and retailers can leverage digital ID technology to establish circular services in every product they manufacture and profitably scale up fashion’s circular economy.
- The document, Industry-Aligned Action Plan: Digital ID to Scale Circular Systems, was published Wednesday.
- EON connects the world’s products with technology to create infinite new value for business, society and the environment. In 2017, EON led the development of the standardised data language for Digital ID. It was a partnership by leading brands, policymakers, academics and circular businesses. The result was the Circular Product Data Protocol, which launched for free, public use in 2021.
- Accelerating Circularity is a nonprofit that creates new supply chains and business models to turn textile waste into mainstream raw materials. The nonprofit envisions a world where textiles are no longer wasted.
- Eunomia was the research consultant for the project.
Towards a Digital ID: Textile-to-textile recycling currently lacks key elements to scale up significantly. Collection and sorting are not optimised for identifying fibre composition nor detecting contaminants hostile to recycling processes.
- Therefore, collectors, sorters, pre-processors and recyclers find it difficult to efficiently process collected goods into recyclable feedstocks that promise to consistently meet specifications at scale.
- The report envisions a viable market capable of meeting volumes, technical specifications, and regional variations while reducing non-strategic, virgin material consumption. This aim requires detailed material information, ease of consumer engagement, an automated transfer of data to value chain stakeholders and new system infrastructure.
- A digital identity (Digital ID) for each and every item may provide an important means to access the data necessary to meet this growing market need.
The highlights: The entire report is well laid out, and scores high on usability. It's a how-to guide for brands and retailers on how to leverage digital IDs. It also outlines the "next steps":
- The ability of brands to extract maximum first and resale value through digital IDs will disrupt the business models of the secondhand market as it is today. To offset this sector’s lost resale revenue, brands must lead the way in scaling the recycling system by using recycled fibres in their products. Policy measures, such as minimum product recycled content, can support brands in this transition.
- With high resale value items extracted at an early stage of the end-of-use pathway, materials suitable for textile-to-textile recycling may be more efficiently identified in existing sorting operations and with mechanised systems coming online in the near term. This gives brands and retailers access to higher quantities of recycled material, which could also displace some virgin fibres.
What they said:
Connectivity is essential to reshape our relationship with resources and to solve for the systems and incentives preventing our transition to a circular economy. If Digital IDs are implemented according to this plan, brands can access ongoing royalties, relationships and data through products. And stakeholders across the value chain can finally collaborate to access data and identify items —creating the world’s first interconnected system for asset management.
— Natasha Franck
CEO & Founder
EON
