Full Agenda

Welcome: From Circularity Ambition to Scalable Action 

Opening remarks to introduce the summit’s central question: how can the industry make textile circularity safe, credible and scalable by understanding and managing the chemistry behind materials, processes and recycling pathways?

ZDHC’s Role in Scaling Safe Circular Systems

This session introduces ZDHC’s Circularity Strategy and how the ZDHC Programme can enable safe, credible and scalable circular systems.

Why Chemistry Decides What Can Be Reused

A focused session on how safer chemical management supports circular production, from responsible input chemistry to wastewater quality, water reuse and the prevention of hazardous substances re-entering recycled material streams.

Closing the Loop: Recovery and Reuse in Practice

This session looks at how circularity can be applied in production through the recovery and reuse of chemicals, water and process materials. It will explore practical approaches, key barriers and the role of chemical management in reducing waste, improving efficiency and supporting safer closed-loop systems.

Material Reality Check: What Feedstock Tells Us Before Recycling Starts

This session examines the chemical reality of textile feedstock, including dyes, finishes, coatings, blends, contaminants and unknown substances that can affect sorting, processing, safety and the quality of recycled outputs.

Pre-Processing: The Hidden Step That Makes or Breaks Recycling

This session explores why pre-processing is critical to successful recycling. From sorting and material identification to removing trims, finishes, dyes and contaminants, this stage determines whether textiles can become valuable feedstock or end up as waste. The discussion will highlight the technologies, data and chemical knowledge needed to prepare materials for scalable circularity.

Choosing the Right Recycling Pathway: Mechanical, Chemical and the Future Mix

A practical comparison of recycling pathways through a chemistry lens, exploring where mechanical and chemical recycling can succeed, where they face limitations, and what chemical information is needed to select the right route.

From Pilot to Practice: What the Value Chain Must Do Together

A value chain discussion on the roles of mills, chemical suppliers, sorters, recyclers, manufacturers, brands and policymakers in ensuring circularity claims are backed by chemical safety and credible evidence.

Who Builds and Funds the System? Collective Action Beyond Brands

Through use cases and discussion, this session looks at what is needed to scale textile circularity responsibly, including infrastructure, chemical screening, data sharing, aligned standards and collaboration across the full value chain.

Data as the Passport to Circular Textiles

This session explores why chemical information must become part of traceability and product data systems, and how better chemical data can support sorting, recycling decisions, compliance, transparency and trust in recycled materials.

Circularity 2040: Regulation, Risk and the Cost of Doing Nothing

A forward-looking discussion on how regulation may reshape textile design, chemical restrictions, recycled-content requirements, product passports and circular business models and what this means for the future of fashion and textiles.

Closing Reflections: What Needs to Happen Next

Key takeaways from the day, with a focus on what needs to happen next across standards, collaboration, data, infrastructure and policy.

Welcome: From Chemistry Insight to Investment Action

A short opening to connect Day 1 insights with Day 2’s focus: how chemical knowledge, risk visibility and collaboration can move circularity from technical ambition to investable action.

Keynote: Why Circularity Investment Starts with Understanding Risk

A keynote from a brand CFO, investment lead, investor or business leader explaining why circularity cannot be financed properly unless technical, chemical and operational risks are understood first.

Building the Circularity Ecosystem: How Like-Minded Organisations Are Driving Action

This session would explore how organisations such as WRAP, Textile Exchange, Cascale, Apparel Impact Institute, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Global Fashion Agenda, Accelerating Circularity or others are working on circularity and where ZDHC’s chemistry-focused role fits.

The objective should not be to present everyone’s work in isolation, but to answer: How do existing initiatives connect, where are the gaps, and how can the industry avoid fragmented circularity efforts?

Who Pays for Scalable Circularity? Financing the Infrastructure Behind Safe Recycling

This session should look at the real cost of moving from pilots to scale: feedstock systems, pre-processing, recycling infrastructure, testing, data, assurance, safer chemistry and market access.

Do Markets Price Chemical Risk? What Investors Need to Understand

This is where ZDHC’s role becomes strongest for the finance audience. The session should explore whether investors, analysts and brands currently understand chemical risk as a business risk.

Key angle: How can ZDHC help translate chemistry into a language that investors and decision-makers can understand?

This could include chemical risk in feedstock, recycling processes, hazardous inputs, output quality, compliance exposure, reputational risk and future regulation.

The Next Five Years: What Must Happen to Make Circularity Investable?

A forward-looking closing session. It will bring together the threads from Day 2:

• What needs to change in finance?

• What data is missing?

• What role should brands play?

• What should innovators understand about investor expectations?

• What is ZDHC’s contribution?

• What should happen next across the ecosystem?"