The Fashion Pact and Fashion for Good have launched a new cross-industry initiative aimed at helping fashion brands scale textile-to-textile recycled and next-generation fibres by 2030.
The new Circular Fibre Collective has been created to tackle one of the fashion industry’s biggest materials bottlenecks: the gap between ambition and adoption when it comes to lower-impact fibres.
Despite growing pressure on brands to clean up supply chains and reduce reliance on virgin materials, less than one per cent of global fibre consumption currently comes from textile-to-textile recycling, according to the organisations behind the initiative.
The Collective is designed to address that through joint action, bringing together brands and suppliers to help create clearer demand signals for textile-to-textile recycled and next-generation materials, and in turn unlock investment and scale.
The Fashion Pact and Fashion for Good said the industry has been stuck in a circularity “chicken-and-egg” problem, with suppliers unable to invest without demand certainty, and brands unable to commit at scale without reliable supply and infrastructure in place.
The new platform aims to break that deadlock.
It will focus on two core areas. The first is building adoption enablers, including voluntary aggregated demand, non-binding commitments, supply mapping, policy exploration and financing mechanisms.
The second is practical support for brands through tools such as Fashion for Good’s Fiber Club, a next-generation materials toolkit and textile-to-textile recycled materials cohorts.
The initiative was designed with strategic input from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and shaped through consultation with 25 fashion brands.
Eva von Alvensleben, executive director of The Fashion Pact, said the initiative was intended to bring a stronger collective voice to one of the sector’s most pressing challenges.
She said: “The Circular Fibre Collective demonstrates the power of collective action. Together, we can bring a strong, unified voice to accelerate the scaling of textile-to-textile recycled and next-generation materials.”
Fashion for Good managing director Katrin Ley said the initiative builds on years of work around material adoption.
She said: “We’ve been working with brands on next-generation material adoption long enough to know that good intentions don’t move markets — shared engagement does.”
The organisations said that if the sector fully mobilises, up to 2 million tonnes of textile-to-textile recycled and next-generation material capacity could be achieved, helping increase the share of these fibres from less than 1 per cent today to around 8 per cent of global fibre production by 2030.
Leyla Ertur, chief sustainability officer at H&M Group, said long-term progress would depend on coordinated action across the value chain.
She said: “Without credible, long-term demand signals, suppliers cannot invest; without capable supply, brands cannot commit.”
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