Developing a circular textile industry

A ground-breaking sectoral collaboration brings together the fashion and textile sector with environmental agencies.

Contributor

In mid 2022, the Danish Ministry of Environment and the country’s fashion and textile sector announced a trailblazing new approach: a sectoral collaboration designed to engage a large number of Denmark’s fashion and textile sector manufacturers, and help it move from a linear to a circular economy. The Lifestyle Design Cluster across Herning, Aarhus and Copenhagen represents the interests of the Danish industry collaboration.

The ongoing collaboration aims to transform the way the fashion and textile sector manufacture, use, and dispose of clothing and textiles. It focuses on a range of issues, including environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and animal welfare, and has developed a set of guidelines for its members to follow.

These guidelines include a commitment to common goals on circularity within design thinking, in relation to materials and business models; measuring circularity and enabling goal setting and progress; sharing best practice and practical collaborations to effect long-term, systemic change, and setting goals across the sector to stem the growing consumption of resources caused by textile products marketed in Denmark.

By working together, the companies, government agencies, and NGOs have been able to share knowledge, resources, and expertise, and to develop solutions that benefit the industry as a whole. It will position the textile industry in Denmark well so it can continue to thrive and grow in the years ahead.