WCEF2026 Accelerator Session
Building the Circular Fashion 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.
Mrs. Anna Garton
Anna Garton is a Business Developer for the TexFoam Research-to-Business (R2B) project at Aalto University. With 10+ years in textiles circularity—including practical experience of upcycling and as Post-Consumer Textiles Expert using household separately collected textiles as feedstock across multiple processing methods. She leads stakeholder cooperation, partnerships, and ecosystem development to deliver practical impact. She is currently commercializing TexFoam, an open-loop, cross-sector innovation that leverages mixed textiles as a resource. Anna’s work bridges research and industry to accelerate market adoption of circular materials and build scalable value chains across sectors.
Professor Martin Charter
Martin Charter is the founding Director of The Centre Sustainable Design ® at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in 1995 where he has led a range of international, national and regional research projects focused on sustainable innovation and product circularity. With over 30 years experience, Martin has been a member of advisory boards covering sustainable innovation and design including P&G, InterfaceFlor and the World Resources Forum. Martin is the Chair of the Circular Economy Committee (CED/1) at BSI and UK chair/expert to many ecodesign standards (ISO14006:2020, IEC/ISO 62959:2019 and ISO TR 14062: 2001). Martin has organized awareness-raising events related to circularity regulations in the Indian fashion and clothing supply chain and has authored various books on business sustainability including most recently ‘Designing for the Circular Economy’ and ‘Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing and Textiles’.
Heli Kangas
Heli Kangas is Development Manager at Valmet, focusing on textile recycling and recycled fiber solutions. She holds a Doctor of Science degree in Forest Products Chemistry and has more than 20 years of experience in biomaterials, sustainable fiber technologies, and circular economy innovation. Before joining Valmet, she held research and leadership roles at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, working on renewable materials and industrial innovation.
Pranav Khanna
Pranav Khanna has a background in Sustainability, Circular Fashion, Plastic waste, Crypto, and Climate action. Expertise includes running accelerators, grant programs, Go-to-market strategies, Community engagement and mobilization in the Web3 space, and business models at the intersection of 'Impact'( Climate) and Blockchain. Past work includes running Gitcoin Climate Rounds, ITS Accelerator, an India first Circular fashion platform, a Plastic Traceability startup, and the Premier Circular Design Fashion challenge Accelerator ( LFW ). Current work is at the intersection of Climate and Blockchain. His last role was Program Director, Venture Builder at Build3. I have also been a key contributor at the ReFi DAO community, and part of the Working group at Gitcoin Grants Climate Round.
Neha Gupta
Neha Gupta is a sustainability strategist, ecosystem builder, and entrepreneur driving circular transformation in the global textile and fashion industry with a Fashion Design degree from NIFT, a Master’s in Marketing from NMIMS, and a certification in Sustainability Assessment from IIT Bombay, she seamlessly blends creativity with strategic business acumen to drive impactful change. As Founder of the International Fashion Business Exchange Council (IFBEC), she leads cross-sector collaborations connecting industry, government, academia, and MSMEs to accelerate responsible business practices and circular economy adoption. Beyond IFBEC, she was the founder of Exchange4Fashion and E4F Ressurect, focused on circular textile solutions, and previously built Silhouette Designer Store, a platform supporting 250+ fashion entrepreneurs and designers.
Kriti Tula
A trained apparel designer and design manager, Kriti has worked in the global apparel industry for more than 10 years. After Pursuing her under grad. at pearl academy in Fashion Designing in 2010 and working in the Indian fashion industry for several years; she moved to London for her masters in Design management on a full scholarship at London college of fashion. After her post graduation, she got a chance to work in London for a few years before coming back to India to expand her label Doodlage. She is the creative brain behind Doodlage. Her journey in sustainable fashion started very early on and has won her many awards and accolades for upcycled, recycled and ethically made fashion. Kriti started the conversation around sustainable fashion in India in 2012. Her work focuses on creating awarness around the need for alternate fashion economies. With Doodlage her aim is to create India's first global sustainable and affordable fashion brand; focussing on reselling, repair and upcycling while including ethically made recycled fabrics. While her work has been covered by many global organisations like Duetsche Welles, Brut, Apple Inc, fashion revolution, sophie australia. Doodlage is equally publicised by media in India and has grown to be one of the most acknowledged and credible brands for sustainable fashion in India.
Dr. Megha Phansalkar
Dr. Megha Phansalkar is an Urban and Regional Planner and social entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in community-driven rural development, water governance, and livelihoods. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Tisser Artisan Trust, an enterprise impacting 100,000+ artisans across Pan India. Her background spans 18 years with the World Bank, steering committee leadership at WSSCC/UNOPS Geneva, and institutional governance roles with Catalyst 2030. Holding a Ph.D. in Resource Planning and a Master’s from CEPT University, she served as Visiting Professor at ATLAS SkillTech University and advises multiple academic and development boards.
What is the Agenda of the Event?
| 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 | Two 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 | 5 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. | – |
| 40 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 |
| 10 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 WCEF2026
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/