GREEN MACHINES: Britain’s high street retailers — and supermarkets — are usually rivals, but they’re coming together for the sake of the environment, and with the aim of reducing and repurposing textile waste in the clothing industry.
New Look, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s are teaming with Oxfam on a new collaboration with Circle-8 to launch The Circuit, an initiative designed to help tackle the U.K.’s growing piles of textile waste.
According to Circle-8, a U.K.-based company that builds infrastructure for automated textile sorting and chemical recycling, around 1.4 million tons of post-consumer textiles were generated in the U.K. in 2024, with nearly half estimated to be non-reusable.
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The company said it’s building The Circuit to bring together retailers, textile recovery partners, recyclers and manufacturers to develop the infrastructure and commercial model to turn more of end-of-use textiles into new raw materials.
The first phase will launch in January 2027 at Oxfam’s site in Batley, Yorkshire. The partners will test automated textile sorting, traceability and routes into fiber-to-fiber recycling.
Cyndi Rhoades, cofounder and chief executive officer of Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, said: “The retailers who help build circular textile value chains today will be best positioned to influence and benefit from them tomorrow. Through The Circuit, we’re powering the relationships, infrastructure and commercial frameworks needed to make that possible. No one organization can create a circular textile value chain alone, and we look forward to welcoming others.”
The partnership aims to develop both mechanical and chemical recycling processes capable of transforming U.K.-generated, post-consumer textiles into raw materials for regional and global textile manufacturing.
Demand for recycled textile materials is growing, but the systems needed to create them from post-consumer textiles are still emerging, according to Circle-8. It added that by creating multiple routes to market and products for recovered materials, participating retailers will help shape the value chains that support future circular materials.
Founding participants in The Circuit include: M&S, New Look, Sainsbury’s, Oxfam and Circle-8. Development and recycling partners include Biffa and Ekman Group, Usha Yarns, Kipas, Reju and Worn Again Technologies.
