Circular fashion supply chain management: exploring impediments and prescribing future research agenda

Circular fashion supply chain management: exploring impediments and prescribing future research agenda 1.1 Contextualizing the need for circularity in fashion supply chains This Editorial emerges at the time when the notion of "circularity" or circular supply chains and business models has gained considerable momentum in the fashion industry worldwide. Through several disruptive innovations related to products and materials, such as use of recycled fibres, process technologies related to sorting and recycling, and several newly observed practices, such as collaborative consumption, take-back schemes, etc., the industry as a whole has strived towards being more restorative and regenerative in the flow of not only products, but also by-products and wastes by narrowing, slowing and closing the resource and energy flows However, currently the dominant operating logics of fashion businesses of mass production, fast fashion consumption and linear take-make-disposal model (Pulse of the Fashion Industry, 2017) still remain intact, where only around 20 per cent of clothing is recycled or reused (Global Footprint Network, 2017). As a consequence, the fashion industry is highly wasteful and resource draining in natureranking fourth in terms of environmental impact with a strikingly high environmental cost (EEA, 2014), stemming from extent of natural resource usage, generation of effluents during apparel production and the scale of landfill produced during disposal (Pulse of the Fashion Industry, 2017). The intensity of the problem is increasing with the proliferation of demand for clothing, as global production surmounted 1bn items in 2014 and consumption is over 62m tons and is expected to increase by 63 per cent to 102m by 2030 (McKinsey & Company, 2016; Pulse of the Fashion Industry, 2017).