Retaining Value: Why Textile Circularity Requires National Systems

By Khuloud Hasan Al Nuwais, Chief Sustainability Officer, Emirates Foundation

As the world accelerates efforts to address climate change, the sustainable management of resources has become one of the defining priorities of our time. Achieving a low-carbon, circular economy depends not only on reducing emissions but also on how effectively we preserve the value of the resources and materials already in use. However, experience consistently shows that while individual corporate initiatives, take-back schemes, and recycling technologies demonstrate what is possible, isolated efforts alone are insufficient. Lasting change and true scale can only be achieved through coordinated national systems.

Why textiles demand our attention

Textiles offer one of the clearest illustrations of why systemic action is urgently required. Every garment requires significant amounts of water, energy, raw materials, and human effort to produce, yet far too often these valuable resources are lost when textiles are discarded after a short life. Rethinking how we design, use, reuse, and recycle textiles is therefore not simply a waste management challenge, it is an opportunity to reduce environmental impacts, conserve natural resources, and unlock long-term economic value.

One lesson I have come to appreciate through my work is that lasting change rarely depends on a single intervention. Around the world, businesses are investing in circular business models, recyclers are deploying new technologies, and organizations are engaging in take-back initiatives. Yet without a central orchestrator to align standards, build connective infrastructure, and facilitate interoperability across the value chain, these isolated success stories remain fragmented, unable to achieve macro-scale impact.

The UAE’s opportunity

The UAE’s experience highlights why an orchestrated national framework matters so deeply.

In 2024, the UAE generated approximately 220,000 tonnes of textile waste and consumed around 500 million textile items across fashion, home furnishings, and industrial uniforms. At the same time, it occupies a unique position within global textile flows as both a major importer and exporter of used textiles. This presents not only an environmental challenge but also a significant economic opportunity.

Textile circularity enables discarded materials to become valuable resources for new products, businesses, and markets. By recovering, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling textiles, circular economy models can stimulate innovation, attract investment, create skilled jobs and strengthen domestic value chains, demonstrating that sustainability and competitiveness can reinforce one another.

Naseej: building a national system

This need for a centralized orchestrator is precisely why Naseej, the national textile circularity initiative, was launched. Established following the momentum created at COP28, Naseej was launched under Presidential directive and is led through the National Projects Office in partnership with the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, Emirates Foundation, and Tadweer Group. Its role is to convene stakeholders behind a shared national approach to textile circularity.

The power of this coordinated framework is already visible in practice. Fourteen strategic memoranda of understanding have already brought together partners spanning the textile value chain, with further partnerships in development. Collaboration is already translating into action. Strategic partners are developing circular uniform programs and other pilot initiatives that demonstrate textile circularity in practice, creating proof of concept for national scale. Landmark Group has completed a large-scale take-back trial across more than 75 UAE stores, while a school uniform take-back program developed with Lulu Group demonstrates how collaboration across the value chain can help keep textiles in circulation. Together, these initiatives are building the evidence and operational experience needed to expand circular solutions across the UAE.

The levers we can pull

Within this national architecture, specific structural levers can be pulled to drive widespread participation. Procurement has a significant role to play. Around half of the UAE’s population wears a uniform each day, giving governments, schools, and businesses the opportunity to influence millions of garments through procurement decisions, product specifications, and take-back programs that shape how textiles are designed, used, recovered, and reintroduced into the economy.

Alongside policy, infrastructure, and industry collaboration, communities have an equally important role to play. Lasting change depends on how we value, use, and care for the clothes we own. Choosing to repair, reuse, and purchase second-hand and recycle textiles helps keep valuable materials in circulation for longer while reducing demand for virgin resources, lowering emissions and conserving water and energy. Continued innovation in materials, recycling technologies and circular business models will further accelerate this transition.

This coordinated approach enables individual initiatives to deliver lasting collective impact. Collaboration across the value chain creates the knowledge, evidence, and capabilities needed to shape effective policy, guide investment, and accelerate circular solutions. Every textile already carries measurable economic, environmental, and social value. Our responsibility is to create the conditions that allow that value to be retained for longer through strong partnerships and closed-loop systems.

The commitment

Ultimately, a coordinated national approach allows individual initiatives to deliver lasting, compounding impact. By serving as the connective tissue for standards, partnerships, and infrastructure, Naseej creates the knowledge and capabilities required to shape effective policy and guide future investment. Every textile already carries measurable economic, environmental, and social value that must be retained.

As the UAE advances this ambition, textile circularity offers a practical example of what can be achieved when long-term vision is matched by coordinated action, providing not only a resilient circular economy at home but a scalable model for other nations seeking to transform their own textile systems.