Although investment and action are increasingly channeled into circularity in fashion, scale and impact remain limited, and the apparel industry continues to be a major contributor to global carbon emissions and waste, the ecological breakdown and social injustice. This is due to entrenched systemic barriers that prevent circular solutions from achieving their full potential.
The Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion (ESCF) programme by Forum for the Future works with brands and suppliers from across the globe to identify and address systemic barriers in achieving circularity. Forum for the Future established the ESCF programme in 2023 to achieve three goals:
- Identify the factors and conditions that enable an innovation to achieve its full potential, as well as the systemic barriers preventing scaling of innovations, and
- Equip stakeholders in finding new ways of working that effectively scale opportunities to catalyse a deep and urgent transition to full circularity in the sector.
- Co-develop a vision of reconfigured value chains for fashion that enable circularity, and create tangible models that lead to achieving that vision.
The initiative has brought together five global brands and seven manufacturers, conducted research into existing circular innovations, and applied systems thinking frameworks to the analysis to expose the barriers and enablers for the industry to transform.
With the support of the Spronck Foundation, in-person prototyping workshops were held with project partners in September 2024 in Singapore. The workshops produced three conceptual innovations that have the potential to overcome systemic barriers in achieving circularity and regenerative value chains. ESCF will be sharing its learnings and key insights with the industry in early 2025, It establishes the foundation for a second phase of work that will broaden the partner cohort to include more stakeholders, develop the innovations further, and reimagine consumer engagement to drive behavioral change.
