Reconfiguring Value Chains: Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion

21 January 2025: We just launched our report capturing insights from the first phase of our programme, Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion.

Learn more

Insufficient progress despite mounting pressures in the fashion industry

Under pressure to tackle its ecological and social footprint, the fashion industry is introducing various circular innovations to reduce resources, waste and overall impact on the environment.

While significant resources are being spent on researching and implementing technological solutions, far less is invested in truly understanding the conditions that enable innovations to scale and achieve their full potential, and those that prevent them from doing so.

Reconfiguring fashion value chains

Through Forum for the Future's previous circular fashion projects Circular Leap Asia and Tackling Microfibres at Source, we explored the role of manufacturers and upstream solutions to enabling circularity.

Our insights show that the relationship dynamics between manufacturers, brands and retailers during the technical innovation process prevents the implementation and scaling of deeply transformative innovations. Manufacturers may not be prepared or able to absorb the costs of investments in new production methods or equipment, resulting in either unsuccessful implementation of innovations or the inability to mainstream them.

Empowering the fashion industry to achieve circular transformation

It is imperative the industry recognises and acts on the practices and norms for a circular value chain that meets social and environmental goals.

Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion (“ESCF”), is a pre-competitive industry initiative led by Forum for the Future that aims to support the reconfiguring of textile and fashion value chains away from the current linear, extractive model to one that is fair, responsible, socially and ecologically regenerative.

Our goal is to support businesses to navigate the complexity of value chains, recognise their own capacity to lead or contribute to the change required, and support others to work together in a more just and collaborative manner.

From July 2023 – December 2024, Forum convened and led brands, retailers and manufacturers across the fashion industry in a system change and futures programme. Partners undertook research into existing innovations to understand the barriers preventing them from scaling, and explored prototypes of new ways of collaboration in the sector.

Launched 21 January 2025

Phase 1 project report

The insights and recommended actions from the first phase of ESCF equip and guide the fashion industry to:

Identify and deepen understanding of the systemic factors that either support the success of circular innovations or hinder them from scaling and mainstreaming.
Meaningfully innovate in a way that unlocks systemic barriers within the value chain.
Model new ways of collaboration within value chain partners.

Report cover of Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion

Download the report now

Our partners

The industry is in need of visioning to collaborate for collective action. Value chain actors share similar goals but face systemic issues and hurdles. There is a need for more industry alignment over shared challenges and building a roadmap to overcome them. Forum for the Future has the ability to convene partners for collaboration and provide the tools that enable this.

—Carrie Freiman, Senior Director of Sustainability, Reformation

Head shot of Ma Hau Ming, Manager, Corporate Quality and Sustainability, Crystal International Group

The ESCF project convened a group of enthusiastic people in the industry and created a spacious platform to accommodate the problems and possible solutions. We got a chance to conceive the journeys to achieve circularity in the industry and express our visions to strive for the next accomplishment. Although the thoughts may be still imaginative, there will be ways to become pragmatic.

—Ma Hau Ming, Manager – Corporate Quality & Sustainability, Crystal International Group

Forum for the Future empowers us, as different actors across the fashion value chain, to break out of the constraints of daily operations to address the challenges on the path to circularity. Through systems thinking, futures tools and strategic design, they foster collaboration across the value chain and enable us to develop solutions for a truly circular and equitable fashion system.

—Anett Sóti, Global Sustainability and Circularity Manager, Yee Chain Group

This programme is made possible with the generous support of the Flotilla Foundation and Spronck Foundation.

Get involved

If you are interested to find out more about the second phase of ESCF or get involved, please contact us for more information.

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