Back to Baselines in Circular Fashion and Textiles

Back to Baselines in Circular Fashion & Textiles is a £2M collaborative research project led by the University of Leeds and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Innovate UK. It is working to accelerate progress towards establishing a research-validated baseline to analyse the UK fashion & textile sector’s current sustainability status. It will enable the formulation of future strategy aligned with environmental targets. The project is establishing comprehensive, research validated environmental and design baselines, standards and principles for the UK industry by: - Assimilating robust scientific data to build a clear and honest picture of the current baseline position in the UK, as well as highlighting remaining data gaps. - Establishing baseline requirements across multiple thematic areas and identifying priority environmental target areas, eco-credentials and standards, technical innovation, skills gaps, cultures and behaviours. - Convening interactive events to support evidence gathering and analysis, bringing together multidisciplinary expertise to facilitate collaboration, breaking down disciplinary silos and increasing cross-sector and academic-industry engagement. - Providing evidence-based recommendations for forward-strategy to meet sustainability targets, highlighting key target areas where focused intervention would generate the most substantial environmental gains. This is a multi-disciplinary, academic-industry collaborative research project led by the University of Leeds, working with Heriot Watt University, University of Huddersfield, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Manchester Fashion Institute, University of Newcastle, Nottingham Trent University, the University of the Arts London (UAL) and the Royal College of Art (RCA). The UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT) and the Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) are also part of the core research team.