Looking in the mirror: A review of circularity in the clothing and textiles industry in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

The textile industry in New Zealand comprises of many sub-sectors. Fashion clothing has a high profile, with much of the focus on sustainability, environment and social/ ethical considerations on this sector. However, businesses in other textile sub-sectors are also under increased pressure from customers to provide more sustainable offerings, solutions for end-of-use and greater transparency. Until now, no overview of the textile flows in New Zealand has been available to inform stakeholder of the scale of the challenge. 

Bending the current linear system into a closed loop means collecting and sorting used textile resources in New Zealand and feeding them back into the start of the value chain. When most production starts offshore this seems unlikely to be feasible or economic. Current uncoordinated initiatives can be harnessed to create meaningful impact through multi-stakeholder collaboration between sectors and between private business and the public sector. This is an imperative given the small size of the textile sub-sectors – let alone the textile industry as a whole – and will provide an opportunity for New Zealand to move away from high risk, competitive individual activities, to more resilient and scalable collaborative systems. 

The findings of this report have been widely shared within public and private sectors in Aotearoa. The data has been employed to help inform business cases for plant and infrastructure investment as well as decarbonisation and waste minimisation strategies.

Following the release of the report Usedfully - Textile Reuse Programme held industry workshops to co-design a national Clothing and Textile Product Stewardship Scheme for New Zealand, followed by a pilot in Q4, 2021.