The Textiles and Clothing sector is increasingly focused on transitioning towards circular production, with industrial companies striving to integrate sustainable practices. Achieving this goal can involve the rapid adoption of innovative raw fibers (e.g., biodegradable and biobased materials) and maximizing the use of recycled and recyclable fibers. This implicitly demands acting on the total transparency of information along the complex supply chains in this sector to guarantee the correct adoption of these innovative fibers. It is precisely this complexity that hinders efforts to track and accurately disclose material usage. To address this issue, this paper presents a systematic literature review to explore the main challenges in adopting technologies like digital product passports, which can help track materials information along supply chains to support sustainable transitions. The analyzed articles were selected by excluding student thesis works, non-retrievable articles, papers that had a different focus, and literature published before 2020 or in non-institutional journals. The 53 resulting contributions are analyzed through a thematic analysis and discussed, focusing on identifying key material-related data that should be monitored to ensure responsible material use and strengthen sustainable production practices in the Textiles and Clothing sector, thereby guaranteeing control over material use and preventing premature disposal.
Papile et al. (Tue,) studied this question.