对于大多数服装品牌和零售商来说,“we start?" is an important question on their way to circularity. In 2017, the Global Fashion Agenda provided important pointers as to where the industry should go with the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment. For some, setting these goals was just the step they needed to kick-start their transition. For many others, however, the question of how to go from here — our current linear system — to there — a circular, zero waste textiles system — is still largely unanswered.
While the infrastructure to support such a system still needs investment, considering the technologies, solution providers and innovations already available — from automated sorting technologies that enable textile-to-textile recycling such as the Fibersort to third-party providers such as该更新研讨会orThredUP— there is a trove of opportunities for the industry to get started with.
But the textiles system, like all other human-made systems, is made of and heavily relies on people — people who have been trained differently, who find it difficult to navigate the sea of options available to them and who might lack the skills and knowledge they need to even act on these opportunities.
So how can we best equip them to transform the industry from the inside out?
（Re）的教育是一个有希望的途径 - 并且有很多东西需要学习。
To transition to circular design, apparel professionals need to expand their horizons and to understand the use and end-of-use phases of a garment’s lifecycle.
A new school of (circular) design
Most apparel professionals today were trained to design and produce garments with the aesthetics and end-price point rather than the end-user or end-of-life of the garment in mind. This means that what happens to a T-shirt past the point-of-sale is often out of sight and out of mind for the product team who are informing what next season’s collection will look like.
但80%的连续ct’s environmental impact is decided on the design table, so the sketches we make, whether on paper, Clo3D or Illustrator, provide an incredible opportunity for positive impact throughout the chain.
To transition to circular design, apparel professionals need to expand their horizons and to understand the use and end-of-use phases of a garment’s lifecycle. Firstly, let’s consider the use phase; in other design fields, it is not unusual to follow a user-centered philosophy, where the focus is on creating a product that answers the needs and wants of the end-user. However, the user is a nebulous actor in the mind of many apparel designers, whose wishes are often assumed or deliberately steered. Therefore a first and fundamental change is to refocus attention on the user and the function that the garment in question plays for them. This would require us to ask what is the most logical and sustainable design for this garment, considering the function that it will serve for the consumer. Answering this question draws attention to current design-function mismatches, such as the pervasive use of long-lasting synthetic fiber in the production of trend-focused fast fashion items. We need designers to design for appropriate lifecycles, by selecting materials and constructions that serve a product’s use and function.
其次，我们必须解决当消费者说再见的衣服，会发生什么。举例来说，它是什么，使一个服装可回收？这被认为是在一个设计师（亮片或金属钉）的眼中点缀即污染降低到回收器，和许多混合材料目前不能被处理。随着回收技术进步和发展，所以也有自己的输入要求。因此，该行业应跟上形势的发展和调整自己的圆形设计指南“实时”。我们需要设计师拥抱结束使用的供应链流程的复杂性（收集，整理，清洗，修理，再利用，再循环），与它们已经接受了早期的供应链流程相同的激情（纺纱，染色，织造，印刷，制造）。
在所有权和其他圆形的商业模式访问
The promise of a circular design is enabled by the corresponding business model. Garments, when designed for durability, can reach their full potential through a business model that promotes care and facilitates repair. Garments designed for recyclability will be practically recycled only if there is a process to collect them from the consumer and to effectively re-introduce them back into the system. A parallel effort therefore must be made to rethink both the design of the products and the design of the underlying business model.
A circular economy urges us to keep products and materials in use for as long as possible, with recycling seen as a last-resort solution. Indeed, the recycling process is energy- and resource-intensive, and often results in downcycling, with items and materials losing value as they go through the process. The apparel industry must prioritize strategies that extend the active life of a garment, such as renting and resale. But this is an entirely new ball game for many companies and requires that they shift their mindsets, but also their business models, completely.
传统上，商业模式是围绕着所有权，而不是访问。被设计和制造的衣服因此仅与一个生产，或者至少在第一，所有者的初衷。租用或购买二手服装意味着服装将在其一生中多个所有者。这有两个方面的影响。首先，服装的成本构成将显著改变，使多个业主将承担服装而以前只有一个陈老板的成本。其次，衣服将需要重新设计，以适应使用服装的多个所有者 - 也就是，设计的衣服，更耐用。循环经济手机app买球靠谱吗要求我们从根本上我们业务的理解转向像往常一样，反过来消费如常。
This is an entirely new ball game for many companies and requires that they shift their mindsets, but also their business models, completely.
(Re)training current and upcoming fashion professionals
However, a narrow focus on retraining current industry professionals will not suffice. The fashion education sector is continually growing, with more young people pursuing a career in fashion design, management and branding. In the United Kingdom alone, more than 30 colleges and universities offer fashion degree courses, with thousands of fashion design graduates each year. But many universities struggle to adapt to the latest developments in sustainability and are still training their students for the industry of the past. This creates a "chicken and the egg" scenario: While industry is adopting new circular skillsets and mindsets, the graduates who are unleashed each year may be equipped with the opposite — a "linear" skillset and mindset.
Some universities and institutes are leading the way by embedding circularity into the curriculum. The Amsterdam Fashion Institute, for example, collaborated with Circle Economy and Fashion For Good to design the world’s first master’s degree focused on circular fashion entrepreneurship in 2018, while universities such as UAL have dedicated an entire research faculty to designing for circularity and TU Delft has developed MOOCS deep diving into the topic. But just as the uptake of circularity across the fashion industry remains the competitive advantage of the top performing giants, so too does the uptake of circularity across the fashion education remain a privilege for a few specialized and frontrunning institutions, mostly situated in the global north. What is imperative for the global acceleration of this topic is the collaborative development and dissemination across industry and academia, but also across geographies and markets.
In order to achieve meaningful and sustained systems-change, both education and industry need to be trained for circularity in parallel. Doing so will allow for a common set of principles and processes to be developed, as well as a unified language. It is with this in mind that Circle Economy has developed its dual approach and trained over 200 current and upcoming fashion professionals in 2019. Training in parallel presents an exciting opportunity for industry to stipulate and steer what knowledge, skills and attitudes they are looking for in new talent. In return, education can provide industry with fresh ideas and pioneering research on real-life industry challenges.
Resources to support these upcoming and current professionals in getting started do exist and are openly available. These often make for a great starting point and allow disparate groups of employees to learn more about the topic, but to effect real change, all the right stakeholders in an organization need to be aligned, which often requires sitting them at the same table. Most important, though, is that (re)education within universities and brands need to happen in sync with one another so as to accelerate the change our system so desperately needs.
So what (re)education options are available, and when should brands and students choose them?
- Online resources are great to plant the seed and get an idea of what the circular economy is. Examples include the European Parliamentary Resource Service, the Global Fashion Agenda’s Design for Longevity platform and various circular design guides, including those of NIKE, IDEO and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
- Online education is effective in raising awareness across large employee groups and equipping them with a similar baseline of knowledge. Examples include TU Delft’s Introduction to the Circular Economy MOOC, Wageningen University’s Circular Fashion Design MOOC and the Sustainable Fashion Academy’s paid online course.
- 在人或远程，实时的培训计划是特别有效获得大约在同一（虚拟）表，深入了解重点圆的主题不同的部门，得到的买入从主要决策者和驱动战略发展。例子包括循环经济的工程课程培训计划，专注于服装品牌，或ACDN和循环经济的循环品牌节目。
- Developing customized programs with a trusted partner is also a viable alternative when there is large alignment across teams and you have the resources to do so. Examples includeThe North Face’s collaboration with The Renewal Workshop, or ASOS’ collaboration with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion.
