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It makes little sense to recycle a jacket: this is how we close the textile loop

24/3/2020

 
Curtains, bedlinen, pillow sheets, clothing, these are some examples of textile products that are produced to use and then thrown away. Makes sense, factories work in a linear system – a colbert is often not designed to recycle. After use it ends up on a pile of textiles. A pile that will be burned so it at least generates energy. I – and with me more textile companies – am convinced we can do better. We are able to reuse materials. And we can make the linear system into a circular one. With these five possibilities we close the textile loop.
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Self education of circular design

28/11/2017

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2018….is almost there, how about a new year intention: to learn about circular economy and how to integrate this in textile-product design? 
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More than two years ago I made a blogpost  with a few tools on designing eco-effective. But there are so many tools to help you out. Hereby I will share a few with you that caught my attention.

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Material passport for textile items

25/7/2017

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In the beginning of this year I compared different, freely available, material passports in the Netherlands for the infrastructure coalition of MVO Nederland, called Groene Netten. At that moment I started to question myself if this would work for the textile sector as well. I am curious what your opinion is. 

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The tetris of design: Zero Waste Pattern Cutting

26/2/2017

 
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Timo Rissanen
To create zero waste with a textile design there are multiple options. For example fully fashioned knitwear, 3D printing or not designing at all (probably not your preferred option). The most known option is Zero Waste Pattern Cutting (ZWPC) and in this blog article I am going to give a few examples.

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Tiny design improvements each day

29/1/2017

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How to deal with sustainability information overload and start improving your design?
In this blog article I am going give you some tips on how to deal with it, hoping you feel you can make a change and start with it today.

A few years ago circular economy was a new concept, just like Cradle-to-cradle before that
, now I believe we have the knowledge and tools available to make a circular economy happen. But why didn’t it happen yet? It is important that enough people start to understand the concept, find it important and act upon it. Knowing is a totally different concept than doing.

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9 shifts to make a circular textile economy possible

27/9/2016

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I am writing blog articles since January 2012. Cradle-to-cradle was the main subject, focussed on which materials and techniques make textile products suitable for biodegradation or recycling. Ones in a while it is good to take a broader view and see the shifts that are needed to make a circular economy possible, that is what I will do in this article.
Why a circular economy? Take a look at this (Dutch) video:

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ABC-X tool, improving a design

29/3/2016

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When improving an existing design, making it more environment friendly by choosing different materials, this tool might come in handy. The ABC-X list, developed by EPEA.
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Obstacle or temptation?

29/9/2015

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When you want to make a good product you have to set a goal and start somewhere. You cannot do everything good at ones but need to continuously improve step-by-step by doing research and making informed choices. Last year when I gave an eco-effective training a participant gave the group and me an interesting insight. Simple yet effective! Today I would like to share this with you.

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Tools for learning eco-effective designing

13/8/2015

 
You would like to know more about eco-effective designing, but you do not know where to get this knowledge? In this blog article I am going to give you some links to tools and books that you can use for self-education.
Eco-effective designing stands for considering the effect of a design choice on the ecological, economic and social/cultural environment. There are different names for this way of designing. Eco-effectiveness is a term that comes from Cradle-to-Cradle. But also biomimicry and circular economy have methods that can be used to reach the same goal.

A few months ago I wrote about the Cradle-to-Cradle online course (click here for the link) and now I would like to add more self-education options to this.
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The Ten
http://www.tedresearch.net/teds-ten/
An initiative from Textiles Environment Design (TED) in London. “These strategies have emerged out of a need for a toolbox for designers to help them navigate the complexity of sustainability issues and to offer real ways for designing 'better'.” Each strategy consist of a short text and a video of 2 minutes.

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Nature Inspired Design
http://www.natureinspireddesign.nl/
Nature inspired design combines 8 elements (concept, workings, recycling, health, foodweb, symbiosis, value, salecycle) with 8 disciplines (design, biology, engineering, chemistry, medicine, ecology, business and market) The authors advice to work with a team in which each discipline gets a role. The book gives design tools to come to solutions with these elements and disciplines.

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Products that last
This book  (Dutch version here) is used for the CIRCO trainings.
An initiative of Click NL for creating business through circular design. In the book you find design and business models that could work in a Circular economy. Interesting about this book in comparison to the other self-education options is that this book focuses more on the economy aspect but through design.

Cradle-to-Cradle online course

30/6/2015

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In 2009 I followed the Cradle-to-Cradle(C2C) training of EPEA which made me accredited as C2C design consultant. Now there is an online course which gives information about C2C in an accessible way. If you like to know more about C2C this is a good course to follow.

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