Abstract for: Modeling Circular Economy Barriers to Textile Waste Valorization using Causal Loop Diagram

Despite circular economy commitments, fiber-to-fiber recycling remains stuck at 1% globally. Post-industrial textile flows represent a high-potential yet largely unrecycled resource in Europe. Existing barrier analyses identify influential factors but fail to capture feedback dynamics that explain systemic lock-in. This study develops a causal loop diagram to map interdependencies among barriers and to assess the hypothesis that volume consolidation acts as a structural lock, by revealing how mutually conditioning actor behaviors sustain the barriers rather than dissolve them A qualitative system dynamics approach is adopted. A literature review identifies barriers across eight dimensions, complemented by seven semi-structured interviews with French textile chain actors spanning the full value chain. Cross-thematic analysis of both sources guides the construction of a causal loop diagram (CLD) mapping interdependencies among barriers. Preliminary analysis hypothesizes three feedback loops at the moment. Build around economies of scale, relational capital, and investment-driven technological maturity. Those loops are currently trapped in low-activity regimes. This work offers an original CLD-based mapping of systemic barriers to textile waste valorization in Europe, an area underrepresented in existing SD literature. By foregrounding feedback structures over static influence hierarchies, it reveals the relational logic of systemic lock-in. If the massification hypothesis is confirmed through expert validation, the undergoing model will be extended toward quantitative modeling. To assist with writing reformulation. Substential content is author's own