Fashion and furnishing fabrics bring colour to our lives. Because tastes differ and styles change over time, the textile industry produces a wide range of different products with very short economic lifetimes. Resource efficiency is an issue here. Not only because even the highest-quality products are disposed of as waste within a limited time, but also because their production is energy and resource intensive. In addition, most textile companies use fresh water in their production processes to ensure the quality of the final products. This results in considerable volumes of waste water.

Closing material loops, integrated chain management, cradle to cradle production and the circular economy are just some of the many concepts that have emerged over the last two decades, and many industries are working hard to apply them in practice. Ambitious projects have led to impressive results, but all those involved acknowledge that the key to success is cooperation between all links in the production chain.

This chapter presents four examples of companies that have succeeded in closing the material loop. Three of them have been inspired by the cradle to cradle approach developed by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. These companies have demonstrated that it is possible to use recycled secondary materials to make better than standard products. They have shown that it is possible to design short-cycle products that can be ‘reincarnated’ at the end of their economic lifetime. Their experiences make it clear that it is possible to identify new business opportunities by looking at the product chain as a closed system.

For the fourth company described in this chapter, the key is water – or, rather, the substitution of water by supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent for dyeing fabrics. This revolutionary method of dyeing fabric eliminates the need for vast amounts of fresh water and chemical dispersants, while radically reducing the use of energy and emissions of waste water.