Abstract
This chapter offers an interdisciplinary overview of fashion sustainability research with a focus on policy design efforts to meet the goals of the United Nations’ Charter for Sustainable Fashion for circularity. It merges the latest findings from engineering, nanotechnology, chemistry and biochemistry on textile mechanics, recycling, and effluent filtration innovations, with the analyses of economists, sociologists, marketing, business experts, and academics in fashion design and operations management, on efforts to introduce circular production and consumption platforms. The issue is that the science has not caught up with the policy promises of circularity because it is still technologically nearly impossible to recycle clothes in a way that can constitute an ecological improvement. Yet, the calls for change are incentivising product innovators to enter the fashion market and develop new textile-to-textile recycling technologies. This chapter focuses on those innovators, their products, and the challenges they face to compete in an industry that keeps evolving from fast to ultra-fast fashion. It concludes with an analysis of the policies in play to incentivise their growth and the policy design challenges that still need to be addressed to reach fashion circularity goals.