Upstream Circularity Playbook

Upstream Circularity Playbook

The Upstream Circularity Playbook is a pragmatic guide, offering best practice examples to establish and scale circularity practices in garment manufacturing countries, available in 6 languages: English, Bengali, Indonesian, Khmer, Simplified Chinese, and Vietnamese.

About the Report

Developed with the support from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the H&M Foundation, the Upstream Circularity Playbook is designed to inspire and encourage public and private sector actors to implement and support business models which valorise post-industrial waste – waste generated from industrial processes such as milling, spinning and garment production. The report focuses on practices specifically upstream of the fashion value chain, such as enhancing the sorting, segregation and recycling of post-industrial waste.

This comprehensive resource also outlines essential enablers needed to support a conducive environment for upstream circularity, and draws on extensive case studies across multiple countries, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, offering replicable models for scaling circular solutions in various global contexts.

 

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A Step-by-Step Guide

The Upstream Circularity Playbook offers a pragmatic, step-by-step framework for building the necessary infrastructure to scale circularity in garment manufacturing countries. It provides essential tools for:

    Segregating Textile Waste in Factories

    to prevent contamination and enhance recycling quality

    Digital Traceability of Textile Waste

    to track waste flows and align with recycler requirements.

    Collecting, Aggregating and Sorting

    textile waste to ensure it is properly prepared and delivered to recyclers.

    Matching Textile Waste to Best Use Case

    by selecting the most suitable recycling technologies to ensure high-quality material recovery.

    Design and Recycled Materials

    by incorporating recycled materials into new products, contributing to the creation of a closed-loop system.

Regional Case Studies

The Upstream Circularity Playbook showcases 21 case studies, featuring pioneering companies and institutions already implementing, testing and scaling upstream circularity practices in manufacturing countries around the world, often in collaboration with peers and partners in the value chain.

Federica Marchionni ● Chief Executive Officer, Global Fashion Agenda
"The Upstream Circularity Playbook is a vital tool for embedding circularity across the fashion value chain on a global scale. By prioritising innovation and value creation in key manufacturing regions, we are using post-industrial waste to build the infrastructure needed to attract and scale recyclers, ultimately preparing these regions for post-consumer waste recycling and driving meaningful change worldwide."

Other resources

    Scaling Circularity Report

    Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey & Company present the scaling circularity report. Lessons learned from the Circular Fashion Partnership for building pre-competitive collaborations to scale upstream circular fashion systems.

    Read More

    Pre-feasibility Report

    Analysis of Post Industrial Textile Fiber-2-Fiber Recycling in Bangladesh

    Read More