Full Circle Fibres, and our founder, Meriel Chamberlin, has been active in industry networks and advocacy for years and in some cases decades. Here are some of the key organisations, both industry specific and those with a focus on sustainability and business with purpose more generally. Sharing, encouraging, recognising and improving in our communities, enterprises, training systems and research is key to continuing to embed and grow our impact.
Our Founder, Meriel, has been a member of the Society of Dyers and Colourists since being a student of Textile Science. Accredited as a Chartered Colourist since early in her career. The SDC, now global, founded in 1884 is still at the forefront of work, expertise and education in colouration, quality, safety and sustainability, from the birth of synthetic dyestuffs to the resurgence of work on natural dyes we can scale, check out our blog post Dye Chemists are Good Wizards.
The Australian Fashion and Textile Industry is in every state, employs hundreds of thousands, and is responsible for more than $6BN in export, we are regularly underestimated! however it does include a large amount of small and micro businesses. We are members, and regularly contribute to calls for industry input to sustainability projects, including the work that’s been done on Seamless, hosting the co-design process for the clothing products stewardship scheme this year.
Full Circle Fibres became a B-Corp in 2022. This process involved assessing, reviewing and assuring our business practices across the board, that our approach to business is for benefit beyond profit. This
QSEC is a hub and advocate for social enterprise in QLD, we are a growing collection of businesses and organisations working across a huge range of ‘for purpose’ missions whether social environmental or both.
ecoBiz is one of the Queensland Governments longest running programs encouraging businesses to reduce waste, water and power use. Full Circle Fibres is part of Limebranch Pty Ltd. Every business and organisation in Queensland is entitled to an ecobiz audit, a free coaching session followed by a report. Wherever you are on your sustainability journey, and however large or small your operation, you’ll find benefit from participating in this program.
We also were project winners to trial decomissioning and recycling garments as part of a circularity project, accessing some in depth coaching and collaboration.
Co-working happens at a whole extra level, our studio and storage is at Food Connect Shed, in Salisbury, Brisbane. Home to a mixture of businesses and organisations connecting to produce that’s locally grown and or a social enterprise. Being part of this community is incredibly rewarding and, frankly, feels great. There are spaces available for events, temporary commercial kitchen use and more.
Seamless, launched in June 2023, as a result of a co-design process that took 18 months, co-ordinated by the Australian Fashion Council. Full Circle Fibres volunteered on the Technical Reference Committee as part of the process. We are pleased to see it move into its next phase with 6 large foundation partners on board it’s set to be up and running in 2024.
