How can textiles and footwear become genuinely circular? Over a three-year period, six Living Labs worked alongside companies, researchers, the social economy sector and local partners to explore how reuse, repair, recycling and new business models can work in practice.
Circularity in Textiles and Footwear: Insights from Three Years of Living Labs
Six Living Labs, One Shared Goal
The textile and footwear sectors face major challenges:
- high environmental impact
- increasingly scarce raw materials
- European regulation heavily focused on extending product lifespans, reuseReuse designates all operations by which substances, materials or products that are not waste are used again in an identical way to their originally intended purpose. and recyclingAny recovery operation through which waste, including organic waste, is reprocessed to become substances, materials or products that can be used for their initial function or other functions.
To drive concrete progress, VLAIO has supported six Living Labs focused on these sectors in recent years, bringing together companies, knowledge institutions, the social economy, designers and local authorities around practical experiments.
What the Living Labs Taught Us
Several Living Labs (such as INFINITEX and ReUse in Style) tested rental models, second-hand sales, leasing and repairRepair is making a faulty product work again, allowing its use to be extended without the user parting with it, or with a view to reuse (donation, second-hand sale).. The first key lesson: these circular models cannot win consumers over on sustainability alone; they need to meet traditional purchasing criteria (price, convenience, trust and perceived quality) to gain a lasting foothold among brands and retailers. Digitalisation and data also proved essential to making these flows truly scalable.
The Circulair Textiel Living Lab focused on behavioural change rather than technology. To achieve this, it partnered working with local stakeholders (municipal services, second-hand shops, training organisations). Experience-based formats — such as repair workshops or installations — proved more impactful than informative campaigns. Furthermore, repair initiatives were found to create social value.
In the footwear sector, the ReCare About Shoes Living Lab confirmed that circular innovation requires collaboration across the whole chain (brands, retailers, repairers, designers). Three core lessons emerged:
- Consumers must be actively taught how to care for and maintain their footwear.
- Not every circular pathway is immediately profitable, but experimentation still yields crucial insights.
- Design choices (such as modularityThe modularity of a product is a structural principle that allows it to adapt to several types of use. and replaceable parts) are decisive for reuse and recycling.
Finally, the Labs on Fibre and CARPET Living Labs examined non-reusable textile streams. While a significant proportion is technically recyclable, economies of scale, logistics and centralised sorting remain crucial to lowering costs. Design-for-recycling from the outset also plays a key role.
Key Takeaways Across the Board
CircularityCircularity describes the quantity of materials managed in a closed loop. in textiles and footwear succeeds when:
- collaboration across the value chain is central
- circular models align with consumer behaviour and local context
- scaling and design go hand in hand with professionalisation
- there is room for experimentation, even when not everything pays off immediately
What's Next?
In the latest call for projects, “VLAIO Living Labs Circular EconomyThe circular economy is a restorative and regenerative economy. By maintaining the value of the products, materials and resources in the economy through smart product design, repurposing and/or shared use of products, it reduces the extraction of natural resources by using resources already present in the economy. (2025)”, a new initiative called ReLabs on Fibre is taking over the reins to further develop levers for scaling up textile recycling. VLAIO's ambition is to amplify this wave of innovation so that circular solutions become the new standard in Flanders.