Unlike sustainable fashion, which focuses on bringing products using green and organic materials, circular fashion focuses on extending the lifespan of products to eliminate any negative impact on the environment.
Fashion waste is a major environmental problem, with less than 1% of clothing being recycled into new apparel products. According to estimates, the fashion industry produces an average of 13kg of waste per person on the planet.
In this context, the word “circularity” has quickly become a well-received sustainable concept in the fashion field, despite only emerging in 2014.
Up to 90 fashion brands and retailers have signed on to Global Fashion Agenda’s 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment Table.
What is circular fashion?
The circular fashion industry is defined as an industry that minimizes waste and pollution by keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible through reuse and recycling, and having natural sorting systems that regenerate themselves. This concept is intended to create a living environment that limits textile waste.
The circular fashion model reuses old items to extend the life of the product, both helping to protect the environment and bringing high economic value. Products are designed with this in mind from the start, and raw materials are chosen accordingly. All materials are also chosen to ensure that the product can be reused for as long as possible.
Benefits of circular fashion
Circular fashion brings a systematic transformation to the fashion industry and is also a business opportunity for everyone. The essential benefits of this fashion trend include:
- Reduced waste: Because the materials can be easily recycled, they don’t have to be thrown away and can be returned to the factory to be remanufactured, thereby reducing the large amount of waste released into the environment.
- Reduced use of natural resources: These fashion products will often use materials that are easy to recycle, reducing the need to create new materials from natural resources.
- Increased popularity of green energy and reduced pollution: Circular fashion brands actively use wind energy, solar energy, etc. for their production. Therefore, it is possible to minimize the amount of emissions into the environment.
- Reduced waste: The life cycle of circular fashion products will be extended to the maximum, creating more use value, thus minimizing waste.
- Economic savings: With circular fashion, the cost of a product is significantly reduced. You also reduce costs when satisfying your own fashion needs. Instead of having to spend hundreds or millions of dong on a dress, you can only pay less than 100,000 VND.
Differences between circular fashion and sustainable fashion
Sustainable fashion focuses mainly on producing products from green, organic, or recycled materials. It also aims to reduce waste generated during production and transportation.
Sustainable fashion trends aim to produce products with environmentally friendly features. But circular fashion takes a different form, focusing primarily on extending the life of products to eliminate negative environmental impacts. This form focuses on reusing old products, using them over and over again for a long, fixed period of time.
How to develop the circular fashion industry
To create and develop a circular fashion industry requires brands to change their approach to the entire system, from focusing on sustainable and circular design to the production stages.
In addition, brands also need to create conditions for increasing the shelf life of clothes, shoes, and fashion accessories. This can be done through reselling, sharing or leasing models, redesigning existing products, etc.
Currently, many new technologies are being created to recycle garments, including blended products. So to develop sustainable and circular fashion, there needs to be many facilities to collect, recycle, and remanufacture old products.
With circular fashion, it is important to choose fashion materials wisely. The materials should be the type that decomposes quickly in the soil, is easy to decompose, and does not cause pollution when they are no longer usable.