Title: Circular economy for textiles as engrained in the traditional Indian life

Biography:

Anupriya Aggarwal is working at Indian Institute of Technology, India.

Abstract

When compared to the per capita textile waste in other countries, the waste generated by the Indian population is significantly low (0.79kg per capita). There are variousfactors which lead to low textile waste such as the traditional practices of reuse, the design of clothing, lower disposable income and so on. However, the largest eliminators of the textile waste are principles of reuse engrained in the traditional Indian practices and lifestyle like the reuse of the garment by multiple members of the family enabled by (usually a) patrilineal cohabitation known as the Joint family system; and the basic tenets of circularity imbibed in the practice of wearing rectangular pieces of unstitched fabrics like sarees, lungis, veshtis. In this paper we will do a detailed study of how these two traditions encourage a circular economy for textiles.