Fashionscapes: A Circular Economy

A new film challenges the fashion industry on over-production, synthetic fibres, and social implications

How can fashion begin to build a truly circular economy? The new Fashionscapes documentary challenges the industry to change the way it makes clothes.

Looking beyond the buzzwords, director Andrew Morgan and Eco-Age Founder Livia Firth uncover how fashion’s chance to embrace circularity and move away from the take-make-and-waste model is being thwarted.

“Over the years as we’ve travelled, documented and campaigned about the issues in the global fashion industry, we’ve heard the same refrain from big businesses about reaching a magical place where we have a circular economy and it being the solution,” Andrew Morgan said.

“This idea has been used to allow big corporations to put a recycling bin in a store for example whilst continuing to use supply chains that wreak havoc on the natural world and the phrase has been used as a marketing tool and to encourage greenwashing. It is a privilege to have spoken to people who are being affected firsthand and those who are pioneering incredible solutions to tackle this.”

Central to Morgan and Firth’s investigation is exposing how there is little to no mention of the people behind the industry when environmental impacts or sustainability is spoken about: Watch the film

Wool’s role in circularity

Featured in the film is Australian woolgrower Charles Massy. Charles farms in the Morano region of New South Wales, and has been employing regenerative agriculture for the past 20 years.

In the film he shows how wool plays a role in maintaining healthy soils and ecosystems.

Read more: Wool and Soil: How Wool Gives Back to The Environment

Learn More About Wool and All Its Benefits

Wool, by nature a circular fibre, can easily be integreated into sustainable material solutions.  The Woolmark Company’s wool sustainability toolkit is downloadable from woolmark.com.

Discover wool’s many other natural benefits here on iwto.org, inlcuding Why Wool Products are the Sustainable Alternative to Plastics in Your Home