Integrated supply chain models in Italy. Cases study of circular economy in the Italian textile and fashion field.

Abstract

The contribution aims to investigate integrated supply chain models in Italy. Through the analysis of some case studies, it aims to provide an initial mapping of territories where the involvement of communities in the production chains of local companies has generated sustainable circular supply chain models. In addition to the need to take action on carbon emissions (Coccia, 2022), there is a clear need to focus attention on a local dimension of textile and fashion production, capable of conceiving its own doing as part of a totality in which all the living beings that belong to a specific territorial ecosystem move, understood as a set of relations between an environmental system and a human society, which, organised also with evolved urban structures, find in that environmental system most of the fundamental resources for life, developing culturally and producing a system of relations, symbols, knowledge. The concept of the territorial ecosystem becomes fundamental for practicing the concept of sustainability of human settlements (Saragosa, 2001). By shifting the focus to the creation of a virtuous system capable of including and revitalizing local realities (Vaccari, 2021) by building a new system (Fletcher, 2013), new value can be generated and overcome not only the climate crisis but also the cultural crisis in which contemporary society finds itself. The research aims to build the foundations for starting a mapping exercise of those Italian territories, with a focus on central regions such as Tuscany and Marche, where a strategic scenario emerges made up of entrepreneurial realities in which the chain of processes and operations is collectively distributed among the various players. Starting with the raw material and ending with the finished product, the territorial manufacturing assets are distributed among the various actors who manage the various stages of the chain independently.Among these, a virtuous example is Re.Verso, a collaborative circular economy programme in Tuscany, focused on the reuse, recycling, and reduction of textile waste through the construction of a participative community. The programme aims to build an integrated, transparent, traceable, and certified supply chain divided into three phases: sourcing and selection of post-consumer materials, mechanical transformation of these raw materials, and development of a new product through the production of yarn, fabric, and finished accessories. The research aims to investigate a model of innovative practices, which are expressed in participative design dynamics, relations with the territory, new narratives, and synergies between people and communities (Franzo, 2020). To investigate these realities, located in a varied geographical context, which have chosen to work together, to make and create a new system, aimed at the survival and recovery of their economy, to bring the places back to life by preserving skills and knowledge. It is a pervasive revolution that is changing the whole of society, not just industry, so much so that people started talking first about enterprise 4.0 and then about supply chain 4.0 up to ecosystem 4.0 (Idevaia, Resce, 2019).