MSME Fashion Textile Businesses in a Localized European Bio-based Circular Economy

Every year the ever-growing textile industry contributes to global CO2 emissions, creates waste, and emits chemical and microfiber pollution. Many researchers are working on changes at scale for material and production approaches, but transition is urgently required in terms of micro, small and medium scale business practices (MSMEs), utilizing their proximity to fashion users as well as their flexibility to adapt at speed. This chapter explores how MSME businesses working with novel bio-based materials, in local and circular approaches, created new opportunities to transform the fashion textile industry. This chapter presents insights from the HEREWEAR project, a 4-year collaborative research project fostering biobased, circular and local innovation in the European clothing and textile sector. The methods used aimed at systemic change through design and included the development of tools to support mindset changes in businesses, the refinement of biomass processing technologies to fit partner MSME needs, and the creation of new value chains for the application of circular principles across the sector. The chapter examines insights that emerged from direct testing with MSMEs in a systemic context: the practicalities of pursuing bio-based material applications, logistical supply chain flow challenges and the interrogation of 'local' through several different lenses. Key recommendations are made for future innovations in design, materials and supply/value chains, relevant to businesses of all scales and to design decision makers. These highlight the attractivity of using pre-industrialization principles in new digital/ecosystem-based contexts for a shift to a circular economy as an inclusive and just pathway to planetary wellbeing.

(This chapter appears in the book Sustainable Development and Business Transformation, part of the series - World Sustainability - which has published over 40 books to date with contributions from over 1,000 authors from 60 countries. It is the world´s leading peer-reviewed book series on climate change.)

• https://herewear.eu/