Thomas Golfetto

Circular Textile Intelligence Platform

Designing a data-sharing ecosystem to enable circular economy and industrial symbiosis in textile manufacturing through transparency and collaboration.

On this page

  1. Overview
  2. Problem Space
  3. Product Vision
  4. User & Stakeholder Mapping
  5. Key Insight
  6. Solution Concept
  7. Product Design Approach
  8. Core Features
  9. Why This Matters
  10. Challenges & Trade-offs
  11. Outcome

Overview

This project explores how digital platforms can enable circular economy practices in the textile industry by addressing a core systemic issue: lack of transparency and collaboration between manufacturing actors.

The outcome is a product concept and prototype for a platform that facilitates industrial symbiosis, allowing textile manufacturers, certifiers, and institutions to exchange sustainability-related data in a trusted and structured way.

Based on my thesis: Circularity and Technology in Textile Manufacturing: a Blockchain application

Problem Space

The textile industry is one of the most environmentally impactful industries globally, with:

  • High water consumption and pollution
  • Significant chemical waste
  • Fragmented supply chains with limited data visibility

Despite growing pressure from regulators and consumers, companies struggle to adopt circular practices due to:

  • Lack of shared data across stakeholders
  • Limited trust between competing firms
  • Absence of standardized sustainability metrics

As highlighted in the research, collaboration between firms within textile districts is critical, yet currently under-enabled by digital tools.

Diagram of textile supply chain and circular economy loop
The textile recycle journey shows how materials move through design, production, use, collection, and recovery loops across the value chain.

Product Vision

Enable textile ecosystems to operate as connected, circular networks rather than isolated actors.

The product aims to:

  • Transform waste into a shared resource
  • Enable data-driven sustainability decisions
  • Create trust between independent companies
  • Support regulatory compliance and certification

User & Stakeholder Mapping

Through research and system analysis, I identified three primary user groups:

Stakeholder Needs
Textile Manufacturers Need to track production impact, want to reduce waste and costs, and require access to reusable materials.
Certifiers & Institutions Need reliable, auditable sustainability data and monitor environmental compliance.
Municipalities / Ecosystem Coordinators Aim to optimize district-level sustainability and facilitate collaboration between firms.

Key Insight

The main opportunity lies not in optimizing a single company, but in:

Designing a system where waste and data flow across companies as shared assets.

This aligns with the concept of industrial symbiosis, where companies collaborate to optimize resource usage collectively.

Solution Concept

I designed a platform ecosystem that enables:

  1. Data Sharing Layer Standardized environmental data (waste, chemicals, water usage) and real-time input from production processes (via IoT assumption)
  2. Transparency & Trust Layer Shared ledger concept to ensure data integrity, controlled visibility, and trust between actors
  3. Collaboration Layer Discovery of reusable waste/materials and matching supply (waste) with demand (reuse)
Platform architecture and data flow diagram for the circular textile intelligence platform
The platform information flow maps how waste, sustainability data, and certification signals move between manufacturers, nodes, and ecosystem actors.

Product Design Approach

1. Problem Framing

  • Mapped the textile production lifecycle
  • Identified highest environmental impact points (e.g. dyeing, wastewater)
  • Focused on waste management + data transparency

2. System Thinking

Rather than designing a single feature, I approached this as:

  • A multi-sided platform
  • Operating within a regional industrial ecosystem
  • Balancing business incentives, data sensitivity, and collaboration dynamics

3. Value Proposition Design

Stakeholder Value Delivered
Manufacturers Reduce waste costs, access reusable materials
Certifiers Reliable, standardized data
Municipalities Improved environmental monitoring
Ecosystem Increased circularity and efficiency

Core Features

  1. Waste & Resource Registry Companies log waste outputs (materials, chemicals, water data) structured and standardized for comparability
  2. Data Visibility Controls Companies control what data is shared and with whom, enabling collaboration without compromising sensitive information
  3. Smart Matching System Identifies opportunities where one company’s waste becomes another’s input
  4. Certification Integration Certifiers access verified data directly, reducing manual auditing processes

Why This Matters

This project demonstrates how digital products can turn sustainability into a business advantage, enable new collaborative business models, and reduce friction in multi-stakeholder ecosystems.

It shifts sustainability from a compliance burden to a network-driven value creation system.

Challenges & Trade-offs

From a product perspective, key challenges included:

  • Adoption barrier: convincing competitors to share data
  • Data standardization across different companies
  • Balancing transparency vs privacy
  • Integration with existing systems (ERP, IoT, etc.)

These are critical considerations for any real-world product rollout.

Outcome

  • Designed a complete product concept and system architecture
  • Validated feasibility through a working prototype (conceptual implementation)
  • Identified future opportunities:
    • Integration with supply chain platforms
    • Expansion into fashion retail transparency
    • ESG reporting automation
Terminal output from the Corda Textile Symbiosis DLT implementation
These screenshots from the deployed blockchain nodes show the working proof-of-concept running across the network.

Source code: github.com/tgolfetto/textile-sym-dlt/