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from us or even once the retailer has bought it from us (...) at each step of the supply
chain, at each level no one feels as though they have a financial commitment to the
material they have sold.” Products are usually useless at the end of their lifetime
and cannot or only with a lot of effort be remanufactured into something new.
To change that, suppliers and manufacturers need to assume responsibility and
ownership for the things which they have produced.
A second challenge the interview partner sees is the establishment of a recyclinginfrastructure. The interviewee stated that: “The second one is logistics ... I mean
your supply chains are webs that expand and end up with jackets all over the place
and that is really difficult particularly in North-America to decentralize and get
these materials back in a way that you can do something with them.” Especially for
organizations, such as case Iota, which operate worldwide it is a huge challenge to
collect their products from the customer for refurbishing purposes. Customers play
a major role in this context because they need a suitable incentive to value worn
clothes and bring them back instead of just disposing of them.
The last challenge is cross-industrial collaboration which is needed in order togain a comprehensive understanding of the chemicals used in the apparel produced.
Close cooperation between the chemical industry and all other industries processing
the chemicals in their production process is necessary. Major differences regarding
chemical regulations across countries complicate the creation of consistent stan-
dards. The company representative explains the challenge as follows: “I think there
are a lot of materials used in the chemical industry and also in the apparel industry
but the latter has a very vague understanding of the toxicity of the materials they
use so e.g. water repellants, anti-odor chemicals. I think the challenge to understand
which materials are good, which are generally benign, and which ones are potential
threats will be an ongoing one.”
4.11.4 Economic Impacts
The economic impacts that the organization has gained from its circular economy
approach are limited due to the early stage it is at in its implementation of the
concept. Nevertheless, one impact mentioned in the interview is brand trust. By
demonstrating to customers and others that the organization is taking responsi-
bility for the materials used to manufacture its products and the waste it produces
it has built trust, as described in the following quote: “If you are going to look at it
from the purely market-based external perspective, it is about brand trust ... It is
about people looking at what case Iota [changed by researcher] does and believing
that the organization is making smart decisions about the materials they use, how