Square Your Circle: How to Assess the Environmental Impact of Reuse Business Models in Apparel

The guidebook outlines a framework for apparel companies to transition to circular reuse models while avoiding greenwashing. It emphasizes increasing garment utilization, ensuring a lower lifecycle impact compared to traditional models, and displacing the sale of new clothing to decouple business success from resource consumption.

• The apparel industry faces a global economic loss of approximately $500 billion annually due to clothes being discarded before the end of their material utility.
• To accurately assess the environmental impact of reuse models, companies should follow a three-step process: estimating the increase in garment wears compared to traditional lifespans, verifying that the reused garment's lifecycle impact is lower than a traditional one, and focusing on displacing new clothing sales to decouple profit from resource use.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Square Your Circle: How to Assess the Environmental Impact of Reuse Business Models in Apparel. https://www.wri.org/research/square-your-circle-environmental-impact-reuse-model

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Square Your Circle: How to Assess the Environmental Impact of Reuse Business Models in Apparel. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/square-your-circle-environmental-impact-reuse-model.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Square Your Circle: How to Assess the Environmental Impact of Reuse Business Models in Apparel |url=https://www.wri.org/research/square-your-circle-environmental-impact-reuse-model |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendsquare, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Square Your Circle: How to Assess the Environmental Impact of Reuse Business Models in Apparel}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/square-your-circle-environmental-impact-reuse-model}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }