Until now, the fashion industry has been unable to scale and operationalize circular business models. One of the main barriers for brands and circular business partners is the lack of infrastructure to identify and manage goods after sale, and steward products through resale, repair, recycling and more. With the upcoming EU legislation on Digital Product Passports, technologies such as Digital ID are essential for brands looking to comply with regulation, and profitably grow circular business models.
A pre-competitive collaboration, this Industry-Aligned Action Plan provides a roadmap to profitably grow fashion’s circular economy through a viable, global digital ecosystem. At its heart is a call for a shared digital infrastructure and adoption of global standards — essential for brands to capture the resale market, grow textile-to-textile circular business models, and enable the ongoing identification, management and monetization of products and materials.
The Action Plan details how brands can capitalize on the transformational potential of Digital ID technology— enabling them to “install” circular apps within every product, so physical goods can connect and communicate digitally with resellers, recyclers and more. It offers best practices, tools, standards and technologies essential for brands to deploy, capitalize, and connect to an interoperable fashion system.
If implemented successfully, the action plan would connect products, their producers, new service models and recycling systems to create an intelligent, interdependent cloud-infrastructure for commerce.
“If designed correctly, Digital ID solutions have the potential to provide brands with the financial incentives for scalability, customers with services and transparency, circular value chain stakeholders with essential product and material data, and policy initiatives with the data for measurement and accountability.”
Karla Magruder, Founder of Accelerating Circularity
