WCEF 2026 Accelerator Session
Circular Fashion: Building the Ecosystem
17th September | 14:00 to 16:00 IST
Venue/Format: Online
Topics: Business, Design, Industry, Materials, Employment
Organizers
Environmental Management Centre Pvt. Ltd. (EMC), established in 1996 and headquartered in Mumbai, is an internationally recognized sustainability consultancy. EMC works with businesses, financial institutions, and governments to integrate environmental, social, and economic considerations into strategy, investment, and policy. A key focus of EMC’s work is advancing the circular economy by helping organizations improve resource efficiency, redesign products and services, strengthen value chains, and develop sustainable production, consumption, and waste-management systems. Under the leadership of Dr. Prasad Modak, EMC has delivered pioneering assignments that have shaped policy reform, sustainable investment, and institutional capacity building across the region. Guided by its mission of Practicing Sustainability to the Advantage of All, EMC’s expertise spans circular economy, carbon and climate, ESG and Sustainable Finance
Ethica is an internationally recognized, award-winning circular economy consultancy. It works with both private and public sectors to inspire and guide entire industries towards a regenerative circular future. Ethica focuses on circular design and solutions that help businesses improve resiliency, find new sustainable sources of revenue, and ensure that their product-service portfolios bring lasting value to their customers. To date, Ethica has worked with hundreds of companies, and has developed and led Finland’s unique National Circular Design Programme as well as the Nordic Circular Design Programme.
About The Session
Discover how India’s textile hubs, recyclers, and brands can weave a true circular fashion ecosystem from waste to wear. Learn the barriers, business models, and real examples shaping this shift. Whether you’re a designer, manufacturer, brand, or policymaker, this session shows why circularity in fashion is now business critical.
This session is free of charge and open to all, online.
What is the Programme (120 minutes)?
This accelerator session brings together voices from India and the EU region for a focused, two-hour conversation on building a circular fashion ecosystem from design and manufacturing through to recycling and end-of-life. The session is structured to move participants from shared understanding to actionable insight: it opens with framing remarks setting out the scale of the opportunity and the regulatory shifts reshaping the sector, continues with a moderated panel discussion drawing on real examples from Indian textile hubs and EU circular initiatives, and closes with an interactive segment designed to surface practical next steps and opportunities for collaboration across the value chain.
Who are the Speakers?
Our speaker line-up is currently being finalised and will be announced on this page on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026. We are bringing together voices from across the circular fashion value chain including design, manufacturing, policy, and finance from both India and the EU region.
What is the Agenda of the Event?
The detailed agenda will be released on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026
| Time | Segment | What Happens | Speakers/Format |
| 8 min | Welcome & Framing | Joint welcome from EMC and Ethica, framing the session’s core question with a quick live poll to introduce participants. | EMC + Ethica moderators; live poll |
| 20 min | Scene-Setting | Three rapid framings on the India context, EU context, and value chain gaps, followed by a live poll on key circular fashion challenges. | 1 Indian speaker + 1 international speaker |
| 40 min | Moderated Panel | 3–4 speakers share concrete, bankable examples, followed by a discussion on investment gaps and closing commentary from two experts, with a mid-panel live poll. | All panelists |
| 5 min | Break | Short stand-up stretch break with key discussion themes displayed on screen. | – |
| 20 min | Co-Creating the Priority Action List | Participants work in groups on a selected theme to identify priority actions, with a facilitator capturing inputs and sharing a summary. | All participants |
| 20 min | Commitments Wall & Closing | Sharing ways to stay engaged, followed by closing thanks from EMC and Ethica. | EMC + Ethica moderators; all participants |
Why Does this Matter?
Fashion is one of the world’s most resource-intensive industries, making it a critical test case for circularity at scale. Emerging regulations Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), Ecodesign requirements, and Digital Product Passports (DPP) are accelerating the shift toward transparent, accountable textile and fashion value chains. For manufacturing hubs such as India, the choices made today will determine whether the sector stays locked into linear production and waste, or builds the circular infrastructure needed to turn textile waste into economic opportunity.
What’s New?
India generates an estimated 7.8 million tonnes of textile waste each year, with nearly 59% currently reused or recycled through formal and informal networks. While 42% of this waste comes from pre-consumer sources such as manufacturing residues, post-consumer textiles account for the larger share at 58%, making their collection, sorting, and recovery the sector’s most pressing bottleneck. Mechanical recycling is widely used but can reduce fibre quality by 30–40%; chemical recycling remains capital-intensive. New efforts are beginning to close these gaps: UNEP’s circular textiles programme in India, a GEF/UNIDO supply-chain project, and the Laudes Foundation’s goal of one million tonnes of recycled fibre by 2030. Against this backdrop, the session asks a central question on how circular fashion can become profitable and inclusive across the value chain and brings Nordic and European approaches into conversation with Indian and Asian market realities.
Local Examples of Circular Fashion Initiatives
The session spotlights India’s textile hubs, alongside emerging recycling pathways and technologies from both India and the EU region. Drawing on concrete, on-the-ground examples shared by the panellists, the discussion identifies what’s working, where the post-consumer waste and investability gaps remain, and what’s needed to scale circular fashion from pilots to a bankable ecosystem.
How will this help?
This session directly advances WCEF2026’s India agenda by demonstrating circular fashion as a practical economic strategy, connecting local solutions with the global markets, finance, and resilience frameworks WCEF champions. Specifically, it contributes by:
- Scaling and optimising industrial value chains, linking fragmented collection, sorting, and recycling systems into an efficient, investable circular fashion value chain.
- Transitioning informal work into higher-value activity formalising and upskilling waste-management and recovery networks into the circular economy rather than displacing them.
- Bringing the business and industry perspective the real challenges and opportunities for scalable, profitable business into the centre of the session’s recommendations.
By grounding global circular economy ambitions in a concrete, high-impact sector spanning design through end-of-life and drawing on real local case studies and EU best practice, the session offers WCEF2026 delegates a replicable model for turning circularity into economic strategy in emerging manufacturing economies.
EMC and Ethica bring over 10 years of combined circular economy, circular fashion, and Indian market experience to this session.
Which SDGs are Supported?
About WCEF 2026
WCEF2026 will gather forward-looking thinkers and doers and present the game-changers in the circular economy. The forum will be held from 15 to 18 September 2026 in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, India. WCEF2026 is organised jointly by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), operating under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India, together with global and local partners. Free of charge, open to all, online. This event is an Accelerator Session at the World Circular Economy Forum 2026 (wcef2026.com). On social media, you can follow the event with #WCEF2026.
This session is free of charge and open to all, online.
For further information, please contact
Shilpi Kapur, Senior Director
Environmental Management Centre Pvt. Ltd.
Email: shilpi.kapur@emcentre.com
Phone: +91 99100 53404
https://emcentre.com/
Paula Fontell, Founder & Principal Consultant
Ethica Finland
Email: paula.fontell@ethica.fi
Phone: +358 40 768 0160
https://www.ethica.fi/