Towards a More Sustainable and Circular Textile Industry: A Comprehensive Review
The textile industry plays a major role in the global economy, but its conventional linear production model generates significant waste and places considerable pressure on natural resources. Moving toward a circular economy offers an opportunity to address these challenges by reducing waste, extending product lifetimes, and creating new value from discarded materials.
The review paper by Anik Kumar Das et al., entitled “Circular Economy: A Sustainable Model for Waste Reduction and Wealth Creation in the Textile Supply Chain”, provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing transition toward a more sustainable and circular textile industry.
What does this paper cover?
- The transition from a linear to a circular textile economy: An overview of the conventional textile supply chain, its environmental impacts, and the principles of circular economy.
- Textile waste generation and management: Discussion of the main sources of textile waste and the importance of reducing waste throughout the supply chain.
- Recycling and waste valorisation technologies: Review of mechanical, chemical, biochemical, and thermal approaches for recovering valuable materials and transforming textile waste into new products.
- Circular textile materials and products: Exploration of recycled fibres, regenerated materials, bio-based materials, and other opportunities for creating value from textile waste.
- Circular business models: Discussion of strategies such as reuse, repair, recycling, resale, rental, and other approaches that can extend product lifetimes and reduce resource consumption.
- Digital technologies and supply-chain traceability: Examination of how technologies such as the Internet of Things can support transparency, monitoring, and information exchange across the textile supply chain.
- Economic value, risks and challenges: Consideration of the environmental and economic benefits of circularity, its contribution to sustainable development, and the risks and barriers that need to be addressed to support its wider implementation.
Read the full review paper here:
https://4spepublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pls2.10171
