A new project has been involving Turkey since the beginning of 2026—Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye.
It was possible thanks to Global Fashion Agenda, a global platform that encourages and sensitizes the fashion and textile industry to impact less, reduce virgin resource use by 50%, guarantee a living wage for all, and eliminate emissions and pollution.
While GFA also organizes the Global Fashion Summit every year in Copenhagen (this year it will take place on May 5 and 6), it is focused on supporting the transition to a more sustainable future by recalling, educating, and mobilizing stakeholders throughout the fashion value chain.
The Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye is a new initiative that aims to support the development of a circular textile system in the country by collecting and recycling post-industrial textile waste.
The partnership is led by GFA in collaboration with Rematters, a subsidiary of Ereks-Blue Matters focused on developing textile recycling solutions,
supported by implementation partners Reverse Resources, Closed Loop Fashion, and Circle Economy Foundation and funded by H&M Foundation.
The Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye started at the beginning of 2026 and aims to establish textile waste management systems within factories, enhance traceability through digital tools, and connect manufacturers with recyclers to ensure higher-value recovery of post-industrial textile waste.
GFA is calling on brands producing in Türkiye to participate in the program.
As Turkey is one of the world’s leading apparel manufacturing hubs, offers a vertically integrated industrial system, can count on it proximity to the EU, and is focused on increasing regulatory pressure to reduce waste and emissions.
The Circular Fashion Partnership: Turkey will build on the country’s own strengths by developing scalable models for improved waste segregation, fiber-to-fiber recycling, and domestic recovery routes that reduce dependency on virgin materials and landfill.
The program is part of the Global Circular Fashion Forum (GCFF), a wider initiative led by Global Fashion Agenda to advance post-industrial textile recycling through local partnerships in manufacturing regions.
Following some previous successful implementation in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia, the Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye is the fourth national program to deploy this model.
The initiative has already digitally traced over 21,000 tons of textile waste and connected more than 100 factories and 20 global brands to recycling partners across its programs.
The partnership in Türkiye will be customised to the regional context, while drawing on best practices from other countries.
Throughout 2026, the recycling project involving Turkey will engage stakeholders across the value chain via targeted activities including on-site waste management assessments, training and capacity building through specific training models, recycling pitch sessions and matchmaking events, as well as roundtables and policy dialogues with key national actors.
This way, the partnership aims to support Türkiye in becoming a more advanced and forward-thinking textile ecosystem, unlock economic value from waste, and contribute to act more fairly as one of the industry’s most influential sourcing regions.
“Türkiye represents a critical opportunity to accelerate circularity at scale,” commented Federica Marchionni, CEO, Global Fashion Agenda.
“Through the Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye, we aim to foster local collaboration and unlock innovation that can serve as a model for textile-to-textile recycling globally. Such partnerships can establish scalable systems that not only address textile waste, but also contribute to climate goals, regulatory alignment, and long-term competitiveness,” she added.