Game-based Innovation for Circular Textile

The textile industry contributes over 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of the world's wastewater, exceeding emissions from international flights and shipping combined. In the European Union, textile purchases in 2020 resulted in about 270 kg of CO₂ emissions per person, yet only 1% of used clothes are recycled into new garments.
To address these challenges, the Textile Hub Groningen (THG) aims to assist small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and stakeholders in forming circular textile value chains, hence reducing waste.
Designing circular value chains is complex due to conflicting interests, lack of shared understanding, knowledge gaps regarding circular design principles and emerging technologies, and inadequate tools for collaborative business model development. The potential key stakeholders in the circular textile value chain find it hard to use existing tools and methods for designing these value chains as they are often abstract, not designed to be used in a collaborative setting that fosters collective sense making, immersive learning and experimentation. Consequently, the idea of circular textile value chain remains abstract and hard to realize.

Serious games have been used in the past to learn about, simulate and experiment with complex adaptive systems. In this project we aim to answer the following research:
How can serious games be leveraged to design circular textile value chains in the region?
The expected outcomes of this project are:

• Serious game: Facilitates the design of circular textile value chains
• Academic Publication: Publish findings to contribute to scholarly discourse.
• Future Funding Preparation: Mobilize partners and prepare proposals for follow-up funding to expand the approach to other domains.
By leveraging game-based collaborative circular value chain and business model design experiences, this project aims to overcome barriers in designing viable circular value chains in the textile industry.