What are the leading trends and innovations in the world of circular fashion, and what will it take to bring these strategies to scale?

It’s no secret that the fashion industry has an environmental problem: The global fashion industry accounts for 10 percent of global carbon emissions, 20 percent of wastewater and relies on 98 million tons of non-renewable resources each year. And this is to say nothing of the dwindling life cycle of clothing and the resulting waste of more than 10 million tons of textile waste each year in U.S. landfills alone. The need for urgent action is clear. 

Fashion is ripe for a redesign, and applying circular principles to every phase of a garment’s lifespan has the power to revitalize and reimagine the industry as we know it. Revised design principles and new business models — like resale, rental, and repair — can extend product life and redefine ownership. Technological breakthroughs can enable new textiles made from recycled materials and biological sources. Redesigned recycling systems, manufacturing processes and supply chain flows can reduce inefficiencies and prioritize sustainable solutions. 

This half-day tutorial will follow a garment’s trajectory from sourcing and design to the business model within which it’s sold to its end of life management, uncovering leading circular solutions along the way. Bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders from across the apparel value chain, together we’ll explore what it will take to redesign the apparel industry of today. 

How can tracking and traceability enable a more circular system, and how should your company leverage these technologies?
There is a growing number of tools and innovations to help companies track materials, goods and services. These technologies include RFID, QR codes, IoT, watermarks and blockchain, and enable a host of benefits: more transparent supply chains; simplified take-back and reverse logistics; a frictionless user experience; and more efficient management of materials and products at the end of their useful life. Is the wide-spread adoption of these technologies key to an effective circular economy, and if so what value can they unlock for your company, customers and the planet? Join this session to hear from practitioners leveraging these technologies to build more circular, sustainable ecosystems for their products.

What are the climate implications of using plastic packaging, and how should we collectively navigate tradeoffs between plastics and carbon emissions at the corporate, local and national level? 

How can looking to nature unlock circular pathways and financial benefit, and how can your organization tactically leverage biological solutions? 

Harnessing nature's design principles and manufacturing capabilities has the power to unlock $30 trillion of economic activity over the next 30 years. The level of opportunity should come at no surprise, given nature’s regenerative, circular model. Plants, animals (including humans!), and the environment all contribute to the carbon and water cycles, in which basic molecules are continuously repurposed into something more complex, and then returned to their original state. As we continue to learn more about nature and biology, more and more pathways are emerging that are radically changing chemistry, materials, systems, and processes of the future.

In this session, the Biomimicry Institute staff will lead an engaging workshop about how companies large and small can bring biology and nature into their work. We’ll explore Boston Consulting Group's “nature co-design" report; facilitate a hands-on activity to model how to bring nature into internal R&D groups; and share examples and insights about how to work with university groups that are at the leading edge of the field.

How can cities reduce Scope 3 emissions? And how can circular strategies help?

A small but growing body of evidence shows that circular economy approaches, including reuse and composting, can help cities reduce Scope 3 emissions. You’ll hear from a forward-thinking NGO that has quantified these benefits and a sustainability leader who is putting these ideas into action in one of America’s major cities.

And what can MRFs teach you about aligning your packaging strategy with recycling infrastructure? 

Materials recovery facilities, known as MRFs, are taken for granted. This critical infrastructure is a cornerstone of a circular economy for packaging, ensuring materials from residential and commercial recycling programs are sorted and sold as commodities — but only if packaging producers, brands, retailers and consumers set them up for success. It’s time to meet your MRF for a behind-the-scenes look at these facilities. 

MRF operators from across the country will share how MRFs work today, including the latest technological innovations in sorting, regional and facility-specific differences; why facilities can and can’t adjust to changes in the packaging landscape; and what other value chain partners need to know about recyclability in residential programs. Come with your questions to better understand the system that your packaging and products are entering into — and what steps you can take to enable your products and packages return back to the economy.

What is the current landscape of recently passed and proposed packaging and recycling legislation, and what is the industry's role in advancing these policies?

When it comes to our nation’s packaging and recycling policy, the time for dramatic change is now: President Biden has made fighting climate change and boosting environmental protection a crucial focus of the new administration. The EPA has set a recycling goal of 50 percent by 2030 and recently appropriated $1.5 million to collecting detailed data on the recycling system nationwide. At the same time, two states – Maine and Oregon – were the first in the country to pass extended producer responsibility laws covering packaging and California passed a labeling law that will change the way recyclability can be communicated to consumers in our largest state. And the legislative efforts are just beginning, with new bills under consideration and debate, the state of packaging and recycling policy at the state and federal levels is in flux. Join this session to uncover the state of national policy, its implications for industry now and how your company can engage in the policymaking process and advance our national recycling system in the future.

While flexible plastic packaging achieves unprecedented results in weight reduction — reducing material use and lowering greenhouse gas emissions associated with the transportation of products — it unfortunately still poses one of the greatest recycling challenges. As a lightweight material, it is difficult if not impossible to sort and collect. Ashley Leidolf, senior marketing manager for value chain and sustainable packaging at Dow, will lead a conversation around flexible collection models, highlighting solutions that improve collection for flexible packaging, such as store drop-off programs and Hefty Energy Bag, a unique program designed to convert previously non-recycled plastics into energy.

This roundtable is sponsored by Dow. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Through the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, businesses and governments commit to changing how they produce, use and reuse plastic. For many, that means setting recycled content goals — goals that are often ambitious and seemingly far in the future. But as time passes in the blink of an eye, how will your organization meet its recycled content goals? In this roundtable discussion, participants will share their recycled content goals, plans for achieving them or obstacles they've faced along the way. Roundtable host Misty Moore, sustainability manager from Eastman, will facilitate the conversation and share how molecular recycling technologies can help organizations meet and even exceed those goals, with no impact on product performance.

This roundtable is sponsored by Eastman. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

To achieve circularity of products, consumer packaged goods companies rely on the actions of millions of individual consumers. How do you motivate a large, diverse population not only to invest in your sustainability story but also to act in a way that drives circularity? Join a conversation hosted by Tetra Pak, a world-leading food processing and packaging solutions company, to discuss topics such as: creative ways to message to motivate consumers using various channels; how to make the most of packaging real estate to tell your story; educating your employees to become brand ambassadors and an extension of your sustainability team.

This roundtable is sponsored by Tetra Pak. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

What makes a product circular can have a different meaning depending on the product category and the geographical opportunities for end-of-life management, but what is constant across all definitions is the need to reduce and eliminate waste. From materials to components to packaging, design decisions directly impact a product's circularity. Join this discussion to discuss the trade-off decisions companies and designers need to consider when incorporating circularity into their products, and where standards and validations can help.

Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Choosing a sustainable, alternative material is more than calculating a carbon footprint. Many clients ask us how to select more circular or sustainable materials. The answer: It depends. Is your criteria chemicals of concern, the material’s carbon footprint, whether it’s animal welfare-certified, does it have functional requirements: sterile, water proof, food safe, etc.? The criteria for sustainability must also be weighed against considerations of cost, supply chain availability or limitations, and other trade-offs. Participants of this roundtable will learn key tactics for a more robust approach to sustainable material selection, while ensuring that material serves the functional purpose of the product.

This roundtable is sponsored by Anthesis. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Is it really bio-based and sustainable? These are questions that will be increasingly important in a circular economy for polymers, building on bio-based or renewable sources. Credibility and transparency become key success factors in the industry’s transformation. There is an urgent need to trace and track material flows — from input through different processes to product. Digitization will play a major role in securing this traceability. Isabella Tonaco, vice president of strategy execution and marketing at Neste Renewable Polymers and Chemicals, and Phil Brown, vice president of business development and strategy at Circularise, will host this discussion. They will share lessons from Neste’s business of replacing fossil resources with renewable and recycled ones, and Circularise’s solution to facilitate the shift to circularity via blockchain-based technologies. You will hear about solutions already available today as well as future technologies — and the challenges that lay ahead and how to solve them.

This roundtable is sponsored by Neste. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Join this roundtable lunch to discuss creating a circular food economy. Key topics will include the role of public policy (landfill bans); government and private sector financing for infrastructure; the power of upcycling and acceleration of value creation; and the intersection of plastics both as a contaminant and as a compostable in recycling and upcycling systems.

Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Companies like yours are setting ambitious goals to address climate change and create more sustainable packaging — but how do you navigate current system challenges and evolving policy requirements? The Recycling Partnership is bringing the industry together to both accelerate a circular economy and transform the U.S. recycling system.  Sarah Dearman, vice president of circular ventures, will share resources and recently developed tools that can help your organization take action, and would like to hear from you about where the organization can plug into in order to build the system of the future together. Bring your favorite tips and tools to share.

Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Consumers and policymakers alike are demanding more sustainable packaging options, but many companies cite that the largest barrier to change has been the cost of switching. Join this discussion about how increasing efficiencies across the supply chain — through automation, responsible sourcing and other innovations — can make alternatives, such as fiber-based packaging, the best choice for businesses and consumers.

This roundtable is sponsored by WestRock. Roundtable Lunches are interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches are first-come, first-served.

Confusion and chaos often define today’s recycling infrastructure. But a collaborative approach across the value chain—from ensuring a product can be recycled and educating consumers to proper sorting support and identifying end-use markets—can make a difference.

 Join this session to learn how stakeholders in the food and beverage carton industry came together and increased recycling access rates by nearly 240 percent since 2009. In this discussion, you’ll hear how nuts and bolts solutions were identified and how stakeholders worked together to remove recycling barriers, build consumer knowledge, change consumer habits, and more.

This session is sponsored by Tetra Pak. Sponsored sessions are sponsor-created and hosted breakouts, created independently by the sponsor without input from GreenBiz. Please note that attendee contact information will be shared with the sponsoring company.

How can fundamentally redesigning food product portfolios ensure nature-positive systems?

What if food could build biodiversity and tackle climate change? Rather than bending nature to produce food, food can be designed for nature to thrive. By rethinking how ingredients are used and produced, food businesses can provide choices that are better for customers, better for farmers, and better for the environment. Circular design for food uses the principles of the circular economy and applies them across all dimensions of food design, from product concept, through ingredient selection and sourcing, to packaging. This session will describe how circular design for food – fundamentally redesigning product portfolios to use all the diverse food outputs of a nature-positive food system – offers significantly greater benefits than using the same ingredients as today, and requires sourcing them better through regenerative production.

What will it take to prioritize green chemistry in your supply chain?

To build an effective circular economy, designing out toxicity is imperative. Safe chemistry in will equate to safe chemistry out, and optimizing materials to enable infinite recyclability is key.

When purchasing materials, most brands and manufacturers prioritize function, aesthetics, processability and cost. Alongside those key considerations, how can organizations improve the hazard profile and circularity of the materials they purchase? And what will it take to add “made with green chemistry” to the priority list? This panel will explore how leaders in a number of sectors are learning about, reporting on and improving the chemistry of their materials — with a goal of human and environmental safety, and transparency.

What does it take to ensure repairability and enable your customers to extend the product life of your products? 

We’ve all been there: a tablet that won’t charge, a smartphone with a cracked screen, a laptop with a faulty key. For the well used objects, broken parts are inevitable but the disposal of the product doesn't have to be. 

Consider electronic waste: Clocking in at 50 million tons and valued at $57 billion annually, it is the largest growing waste stream on the planet. But what if electronics were designed for disassembly, modularity and replacement parts? What if robust repair ecosystems were available? To reverse growing waste trends and extend the life not just of products, but the carbon embedded within them, repair must be the norm. Join this session as we explore what design considerations should be prioritized when creating more repairable products, and what it takes to support and enable your customers as they extend the life of their products. 

How can your company think holistically and prioritize reduction and elimination when setting packaging goals?

Compostable, recyclable, renewable, reusable or made from recycled content. From fashion to F&B to CPG and beyond, diverse sectors have announced 2025 packaging goals with these commitments front and center. Now comes the hard part. Many of these commitments require significant internal action not to mention functioning external circular systems, like reliable sources of recycled content or composting and recycling infrastructure at scale. What will it take to accomplish your company’s goals? Join this breakout to hear how players across the packaging value chain have navigated trade-offs, generated buy-in, developed new partnerships and made progress towards 2025 packaging goals.

How should compostable packaging feature in your 2025 packaging strategy, and what will it take to make packaging compostability a viable option in the United States? 

The demand for compostable packaging is on the rise — particularly amongst sustainably minded consumers — poised to grow at 17 percent annually over the next five years. Yet as organizations race to achieve recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging commitments, the conversation often begins and ends with recyclability. 

Given the complex, nascent nature of the compostable packaging industry, this disconnect makes sense. There are untold considerations at play: What does it take to sustainably source compostable packaging? How effectively can it protect the product it contains? What infrastructure must be in place to ensure packaging is indeed composted? When composted, what does it take to avoid contamination? Join this session as we explore how compostable packaging should feature in your 2025 packaging strategy, and what it will take to make compostable packaging a successful, viable option in the United States. 

What are digital product passports, what data should they include and how can they facilitate a more circular future? 

The European Union recently announced a requirement for all regulated products to contain a digital product passport. What are the global data requirements for these passports, and how can they act in service of a more circular economy? In this session, Capital Equipment Coalition North America members will discuss their collaboration on data requirements and a unified digital product passport. Together we’ll explore how this tool could facilitate circularity, what data can and should be measured and the responsibilities of each player across the value chain.

How can circular systems and services enable inclusion and what does it take to design them with all communities in mind?

What will it take to scale the implementation of reusable packaging both within your organization and across industries, cities and systems?  

Recent business model innovations have seen a resurgence of reusable packaging services. Yet these operations often struggle to move beyond a pilot and into a scaled solution across industries and systems. There are dozens of relationships and tools to reconsider: partnering with retailers, consumers and logistics providers, engaging consumers, calculating a life cycle assessment, redesigning packaging for different products and digitizing tracking systems, just to name a few. What are the challenges of launching and scaling reusable packaging systems? What are the newest, innovative models being launched across the value chain? What standards and processes are needed to ensure their success? Join this long-form session to learn from practitioners providing and scaling reusable packaging solutions.