Circular economy in the small textile retail sector: a return to roots? A case-study in Brussels Capital Region.

The circular economy is seen as an innovation from an economic point of view: it embodies green growth, called for by a series of economic players, particularly at the European level. Based on this principle, all sectors should be impacted and offer innovative circular products from this new economy, such as the textile sector for example (one of the most polluting sectors in the world). However, if regional subsidies such as those of the Brussels Region favor the installation of textile retail businesses with a circular vocation, it is clear that the structuring of the used textile trade responds to logics that are both prior and far removed from the concerns of circularity, in a context of economic decline of this same small business. Moreover, the diversity within this sector does not allow us to speak of "circular textile trade" as a single entity. How in this case to consider the circular economy as an innovation, in a sector that mixes old second-hand structures and new businesses with a business model claiming to be circular? Our hypothesis is that it is the consumers who carry the added value of the circular economy in the commercial sector, through their new consumer demands. These demands are linked to the values they carry, which leads them to consume in stores in which they recognize themselves and in which they have learned to consume responsibly, more than just circular. Circular stores respond to this requirement by offering specific commercial features.