One of the fundamental challenges in the transition to a circular textile economy is the absence of reliable, real-time data on material flows. Brands set circularity targets; recyclers make investment decisions; policymakers design regulations — yet all of these actors are operating with partial, lagged, or entirely absent data on what happens to textile materials once they leave production facilities.
The TEXroad White Paper, developed through a multi-stakeholder initiative coordinated by Reverse Resources, proposes a practical methodology for measuring textile circulation in real time at the global scale. The core insight is that existing digital infrastructure — already deployed across thousands of factories to manage production data — can be extended to capture waste flow information with minimal additional effort.
The methodology centres on three data capture points: the point of waste generation (factory production floor), the point of collection and sorting (waste handler facilities), and the point of processing (recycler intake). By linking these three nodes through a shared digital protocol, it becomes possible to reconstruct material flow chains and calculate real-time circulation rates.
The white paper also addresses the governance challenges inherent in cross-competitor data sharing. A key design principle is that sensitive commercial data — volumes, prices, counterparty identities — remains with the generating organisation, while aggregated, anonymised flow data is made available to verified platform participants. This architecture enables system-level transparency without compromising individual business confidentiality.
Pilot implementations of the TEXroad methodology in Bangladesh and Turkey have demonstrated that meaningful circulation metrics can be captured with a roughly 60% coverage rate across participating factories — sufficient to generate statistically reliable industry-level estimates. The white paper calls for a coordinated global rollout supported by leading industry bodies, with integration into existing sustainability reporting frameworks.