Take-Back Programs for Fashion Brands’ Garments in Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

In the fashion industry, sustainability and circular economy are crucial aspects to consider for many companies because customers are more and more environmentally and socially conscious during their buying decisions. Thus, fashion companies have started to pay attention to reducing the social and ecological impact of their activities especially within the upstream supply chain processes. Instead, downstream fashion supply chain processes, such as use, reuse and end-of-use management have long been neglected. However, recently, new circular fashion programs have been launched to limit the negative consequences of downstream processes inside the fashion supply chain. In fact, a key component of closed-loop manufacturing systems based on reprocessing materials, reassembling, and re-producing garments efficiently currently involves take-back programs. Therefore, the aim of this manuscript is to provide an overview of take-back programs and their challenges for fashion companies.