Textile waste community circular economy guide

Clothes and textiles are an everyday part of everyone’s life. And textile waste has become one of the largest contributors to Australia’s waste problem. Textile waste repair, recycling and re-use initiatives help to keep textiles and fashion in the system for longer.

It is important to consider all of the following steps on your path to success. For textile waste recovery initiatives, we have highlighted several key capabilities that are worth further consideration. They may provide more challenges and opportunities along the way.

Phase one: Scope and plan

Establish a baseline community need

Learn about your landscape by understanding your:

• employees
• volunteers
• people making or processing textiles
• waste collection partners.

Find out their:

• knowledge and buy-in of the circular economy ideals
• attitudes and behaviours to purchasing and repairing textiles.

You will be better able to run a suitable program that matches skills with resources if you understand other organisations in this field and how you will differentiate yourself.

Understand where your materials are coming from, and how you get them to you. And evaluate your workers’ abilities to make repairs and alterations, or create new goods and garments.

Plan your program

Think about what kind of activities will match your communities’ need. Articulate what drives you to help connect others to your vision. Then you can think about the activities that will help you achieve it.

These are the kinds of activities other programs do:

• Arrange collection and delivery of end of line textiles, which may include running and maintaining vehicles or running a pool of volunteer drivers.
• Run a drop off centre or warehouse to collect unwanted textiles.
• Assess and sell donated end of line clothing.
• Up-cycle by running workshops or a factory line production to turn recycled material into new products. For example, workshops to turn clothes rejected for resale into other items like handbags and toys.
• Inventorise and store material and clothes.
• Liaise with case workers and donor organisations to assess donor needs.
• Pick and pack relief.
• Run pop-up clothing exchange or donation events.
• Run a store to sell items.

Set your boundaries

To help you refine the scope of your program you should consider what you have the capacity to run and whether that matches the need. And the equipment and facilities you have access to, as well as your geographical location.

Think about what sort of arrangement would best work for you. Whether you run pop up workshops or decide to run a permanent factory or warehouse, you should take into account:

• your space – it needs to be fit-for-purpose, secure and accessible to workers
• the preferences of your local demographics
• having a visible and accessible shopfront, if sales are part of your plan
• what specific types of clothes and accessories your customers need
• the availability of employees, volunteers, and warehouse staff and sewists.

Manage risk and maintain Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)

Assess your risks

Understand the risk profile of your intended activities and take steps to mitigate risk through:

• appropriate insurance
• disclaimers
• management processes.

Mitigation could include:

• volunteer training
• induction
• registration or certification.

Understand your agreements

MOUs are the agreements you have with your key partners such as business donors and volunteers. They are useful in establishing clarity around everyone’s roles and responsibilities to help you minimise risk and build productive partnerships.

To ensure compliance, you should make sure your staff and coordinators are aware of any contractual and MOU arrangements relating to their facilities, tools and equipment.

Design activities to change behaviours

The aim of textile waste recovery is to encourage behaviour change in relation to waste. It helps to think about how all aspects of your public interactions contribute to this goal. This could include:

• teaching people to safely store then donate unwanted clothes
• educating the community about responsible donating to reduce illegal dumping and the associated waste costs that will impact your program’s viability
• working with retailers and manufacturers to adopt more sustainable processes to prevent end of line issues
• working with retailers and manufacturers to encourage donation of end of line issue items rather than dumping in landfill
• encouraging appropriate disposal of clothing that your program can’t repair or accept
• changing purchasing behaviour to buy second hand, not new and cheap
• using education resources to promote the above – for example workshops and posters.

Try to design your engagement activities, programs and initiatives in a way that allows you to evaluate their usefulness and or effectiveness. This will also help you demonstrate your value to key stakeholders, including funders.

Phase two: Implement program

Run an efficient program

Most textile recovery programs operate on thin margins, so careful administration of resources is important.

You might consider:

• creating a system to assess donated garments as they arrive, and to help you manage ‘lumpy’ or inconsistent supply. This is a key learning. This is a fundamental and important challenge for all textile waste initiatives as it impacts your workforce, your storage capacity and your income.
• using a stock and inventory system to keep track of garments made or donated in order to demonstrate the value of your activity. This is another key learning.
• having a design team and workplace management system for repairs and creation of new garments.
• appropriate stakeholder and corporate partner management to helps ensure the relationships are equally productive.
• having a sound business and marketing plan, and a budget.

Engage diverse communities

Consider the most appropriate platforms for your programs and whether or not you plan to target certain groups. Different demographics in a community use different media types.

If you understand your community's demographic profile, you can improve information about events and second-hand fashion and textiles use so that it is accessible to groups like migrants and refugees.

Set your team up for success

When engaging volunteers, have clear position descriptions that outline their:

• roles
• responsibilities
• required skills.

Ensure that staff and volunteers who run your program have the appropriate training processes and access to manuals and resources.

Think about your insurance requirements, and what workplace safety requirements you may need for your sewists and pickers when they select items. Think about the needs of your volunteers and staff who deal with donors and recipients of goods, and what guidance they may require.

Circular collaboration

Textile waste programs are more effective when they work together. Consider your peer textile waste initiatives as a supportive and informative network that can help you achieve your shared circular goals.

Think about how you might be able to promote collaboration with each other. For example:

• help each other with consistent messaging
• share knowledge of public event opportunities
• share sewists and knowledge of machinery repair places, parts and sales
• provide local support to broader education campaigns.

Your program will be much stronger and more likely to achieve results if you can identify opportunities for partnership with existing organisations, such as:

• local government
• state government
• textile retailers and manufacturers
• op shops
• neighbourhood houses.

Phase three: Evaluate and improve

Use your learnings to make improvements

Program managers do well when they think about how they might improve future practice. This might mean sharing knowledge with your team or debriefing with other programs and providers. It could mean developing case studies for best practice.

When a new or unexpected donation issue arises, think about ways you can record or document the solution so that they can be repeated or applied elsewhere. Set up an easy-to-use document management system, so that everyone can access information quickly. There are free document management systems that you can use, such as Google Drive and OneDrive.

Funding and business obligations

You need people on your team who understand finance and the obligations of running a business. Complement strong business and finance knowledge with good financial systems that help you to understand quickly how your organisation is performing so that you can respond appropriately.

All programs rely on fundraising, grants and donations, so this will become an important part of your activities.

Financial viability is important to all textile waste programs, so think about ways you can encourage this, such as:

• setting up a commercially viable product with a realistic price point
• encouraging awareness of funding opportunities from philanthropic organisations and different levels of government
• recording data and inventorising stock to communicate its value and show the quantity of goods you’ve saved from landfill
• teaching your volunteers and staff to write successful applications for funding
• setting up ways to encourage donations
• putting a dollar value on the donations you have received, especially corporate donors.

Demonstrate your value

By collecting data on waste avoidance you can show the value of your work to key stakeholders, such as the venue, community and funding bodies. This measuring and storytelling can help you build your community and secure funding and resources for your program.

While it may be challenging to define what you have saved from landfill, if you are repairing items, you can contribute your data to global measures and help to build a stronger story around collective impact through RepairMonitor.

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Case study

Other circular economy initiative guides