| 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. |  |
 2018….is almost there, how about a new year intention: to learn about circular economy and how to integrate this in textile-product design?
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.  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.
 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.
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: 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.   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.
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.
 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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