Home
Transforming Our Economy

About This Collection

Inspired by the Capital Institute's Third Millennium Economy initiative, this collection highlights those voices - ecological economists, sociologist, finance professionals, environmentalists, community developers - advocating a restructuring of our economy to transition to a truly sustainable economic system.

Curated by mokiethecat

A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion's future
December 01, 2017
Ellen MacArthur and Stella McCartney co-host the launch of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new report A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion's future. The report, created by the Circular Fibres Initiative which launched in May this year, calls for the fashion industry to adopt this new vision and create cross industry collaborations to achieve it. Clothes are an everyday necessity, and for many an important expression of individuality. Yet the industry’s current take-make-dispose model is the root cause of many environmental impacts and substantial economic value loss. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. An estimated USD 500 billion value is lost every year due to clothing that’s barely worn and rarely recycled. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. As well as being wasteful, the industry is polluting: clothes release half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean every year, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles. Microfibres are likely impossible to clean up and can enter food chains.