Environmental action NGO WRAP has come out with a circular design toolkit—a practical resource that lays out circular design pillars, principles and strategies as a framework for designers and product development teams to make a positive impact and use design to tackle the climate crisis.
- The information in this guide can empower teams to strategically build the circular design principles into their product ranges.
DESIGNING FOR CIRCULARITY: The toolkit exhorts those at the drawing table to think about each lifecycle stage, the processes that happen at each stage and how they interconnect and influence each other.
Points to consider:
- How to reduce the impact of the raw materials you select.
- How you optimise the use of resources and materials in production to eliminate waste and pollution.
- How you create durable products that can be used for as long as possible.
- How you can make products recyclable, so they never end up in landfill.
Designing for circularity goes beyond a product’s initial use. Consideration also needs to be given to how items can be reused by multiple owners (i.e. can it go through a circular business model such as resale, rental, redistribution or repair?)
THE CIRCULAR DESIGN PILLARS AND PRINCIPLES Developed in collaboration with Textiles 2030 signatories, WRAP’s Design for Recyclability Toolkit is a practical resource designed to help businesses integrate recyclability into product development.
- Designing for circularity can be broken down into four Circular Design Pillars that each address the impacts that occur at the four stages of the product lifecycle: Raw Materials, Production, In Use, After Use.
- Each pillar can then be broken down further into multiple Circular Design Principles, and more detailed Design Strategies, which can be used during design process to reduce a product’s impacts within that pillar.
- The most appropriate principles will vary depending on the product being designed.
Textiles 2030 will work with the industry to quantify the impacts of the Circular Design Principles set out in this guide, develop further tools and resources to support brands, retailers and manufacturers to make informed design decisions, address potential barriers and navigate intricacies, to make a circular future for the fashion and textile industry a reality
A TOOLKIT FOR ACTION: The toolkit serves as a supplementary resource to WRAP’s Circular Design Toolkit for Fashion and Textiles, offering:
- Industry alignment: a consistent framework on circular design that industry can align around.
- Actionable strategies: clear circular design strategies to embed recyclability principles, and those that businesses can implement.
- Inspiring case studies: real-world examples showcasing successful circular design initiatives.
- Insights into innovations: an overview of upcoming technological and digital advancements. Printable worksheets to guide action.
- Future-focused insights, considering both current and emerging recycling technologies.
THE CONTEXT: As much as 80% of a textile product’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage. Therefore, the decisions made by design and product development teams have a huge impact on a product’s environmental footprint—from the raw materials used, to how the product is manufactured, the length of time it is kept in use and what happens to it when it is no longer desired or reaches the end of its usable life.
- Designing for recyclability is essential for transitioning to a circular textile economy. At its core, it means designing products with their end in mind—ensuring that textiles created today can be recycled into new textile products when they are no longer usable.
This serves two important purposes:
- Keeping vital resources within the textiles value chain and out of landfill, combatting textile waste.
- Increasing the availability of recycled fibres and lessening the demand for ‘virgin’ or ‘new’ resource extraction. In this way, WRAP’s scenario modelling indicates that the industry could lower its carbon footprint by 12% and its water footprint by 18%.
ABOUT TEXTILES 30: Textiles 2030 is WRAP’s ground-breaking initiative, harnessing the knowledge and expertise of UK leaders in sustainability, to accelerate the fashion and textile industry’s move towards circularity and support the sector to make rapid, science-based progress on climate change.
- It brings key players from across the fashion and textiles value chain together to find circular solutions and overcome shared challenges.
Its members are united behind ambitious, science-based 2030 targets, with progress measured annually using its exclusive Textiles 2030 Footprint Tool, aimed at:
- 50% reduction in overall carbon footprint of new textile products – in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change;
- 30% reduction in the overall water footprint of new textile products; and
- Industry collaboration to achieve the Textiles 2030 Circularity Roadmap ambitions.
