Circular Fashion Agreement in Catalonia. First year of action

By project AccelerateGDT

Published on 18 December 2023

Spain

Cataluña

About this good practice

In Catalonia, each person consumes 21.5–26 kg of textile products per year, more than 147,000 t/year of textile waste is used for power production or deposited in landfill sites and only 12% of textile waste is collected separately.

The Circular Fashion Agreement was launched in May 2022 with 57 signatories. After its first year of action, the signatures increased to 103 entities from the different parts of the textile value chain. The stakeholders involved are producers, retailers, technological companies and centres, public administrations, universities, waste management companies and entities from the third sector.

To reach the objectives of the Agreement, 8 working groups were set regarding prevention, separate collection, green public procurement, circular products, reuse, recycling, public awareness and dissemination. And different concrete actions have taken place. For instance:

- 080 Reborn: Second-hand clothing fashion show from 080 Barcelona Fashion.
- Submission of projects to industrialize the value chain of the use of post-consumer textiles as secondary raw material in Catalonia within the framework of the circular economy funds from the Catalan Waste Agency
- Ecoloop UB, winner of the Catalonia Ecodesign Awards 2023 in the Product category. Work clothes that contain up to 65 % of recycled fibres.
- Collection Reduir Summer 23 of Miriam Ponsa. Clothes made of recycled and natural fabrics such as cotton, silk, and hemp and proposed production on demand.

Resources needed

The personal and economic resources came from CAFRA Dept:
- Team of 4 people was directly involved (head of the unit, 2 senior police officers, and administrative).
- A consultancy company has been hired as technical secretariat.
74.128,23 €, from which 12.865,23 € were VAT (21% VAT) for 2 years.

Evidence of success

This is the result of the Circular Fashion Agreement in the first year of implementation, and it consisted of:
- Eight working groups that held 18 meetings
- Increasing interest of the Agreement among the stakeholders of the Catalan textile value chain: from 57 to 103 signatories
- Submission of projects to industrialize the value chain of the use of post-consumer textiles as a secondary raw material in Catalonia within the framework of the circular economy funds from the Catalan Waste Agency

Potential for learning or transfer

The main reasons why Circular Fashion Agreement have been successful and could be transferred are:
- The creation of working groups allows different stakeholders from different links of the textile value chain (from producers, machinery companies, retailers and waste management companies) to share knowledge, experience and news, and to know each other.
- The Agreement is the perfect arena to build a systemic vision to tackle challenges and to raise collaborative pilot projects.