The Social Impacts of Circular Strategies in the Apparel Value Chain; a Comparative Study Between Three Countries.

The apparel value chain is essential for the livelihood of millions of workers around the globe. However, human rights violations and the lack of a sustained income by apparel workers demonstrate the poor working conditions present in this sector. Circular economy (CE) has been used by incumbent businesses and startups as a framework to achieve sustainability, thus contributing to its economic, environmental and social dimensions. However, there is a lack of knowledge on its social impact. Most of the literature assesses CE's social impacts by focusing only on the number of jobs created. However, the majority of studies agree on the need to analyse further the quality and inclusivity aspects. This paper explores the social impact of the different circular strategies implemented in three countries. It assesses social impacts related to the quality of jobs, workers' sustainable livelihood and gender equality and inclusion. Results corroborate that CE social ambition is low, and that current circular strategies follow the same feminisation and precariousness of working conditions found in the linear apparel value chain. Thus, policymakers and businesses alike need to strengthen their CE social ambition; coordinate policy and strategies with different countries stakeholders of the apparel value chain to minimise trade-offs; and safeguard a just circular transition. This research contributes to the body of literature on CE by introducing a social impact assessment framework for circularity called SIAF-CE⚥. Additionally, it provides evidence on the current CE social impact implemented by startups and incumbents in regional and global contexts. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43615-022-00203-8.

Energy demand for materials in an international context.

Materials are everywhere and have determined society. The rapid increase in consumption of materials has led to an increase in the use of energy and release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Reducing emissions in material-producing industries is a key challenge. If all of industry switched to current best practices, the energy-efficiency improvement potential would be between 20% and 35% for most sectors. While these are considerable potentials, especially for sectors that have historically paid a lot of attention to energy-efficiency improvement, realization of these potentials under current 'business as usual' conditions is slow due to a large variety of barriers and limited efforts by industry and governments around the world. Importantly, the potentials are not sufficient to achieve the deep reductions in carbon emissions that will be necessary to stay within the climate boundaries as agreed in the 2015 Paris Conference of Parties. Other opportunities need to be included in the menu of options to mitigate GHG emissions. It is essential to develop integrated policies combining energy efficiency, renewable energy and material efficiency and material demand reduction, offering the most economically attractive way to realize deep reductions in carbon emissions.This article is part of the themed issue 'Material demand reduction'.