Circular Innovation

Why It Matters 

Our products and materials rely on natural resources—including energy and water—at every stage of their lifecycle, from extraction to distribution. Chemicals used in the apparel industry can also impact natural systems. To manage these impacts, we focus on circular innovation approaches in raw material inputs, product design, and product use.

What We’re Doing

Our 2030 Goals

We focus on developing circular product solutions^{11 Solutions such as adopting preferred materials for products, fostering circular design principles, or offering solutions to extend product use.} for our business and guests. Our 2030 Impact Agenda circularity goals are:

• Make 90% of products that contain at least 25% preferred materials^{22 We consider materials to be preferred when their production processes have the potential to minimize impacts on areas like climate, nature, or communities, compared to the conventional equivalents, and/or when they align with independent third-party certifications, schemes, or standards. Where applicable, we use the Textile Exchange 2026 Preferred Production Systems guidance to inform the continued development of our framework for evaluating materials. We regularly assess the attributes for preferred materials and evolve our definition as needed. Please see the 2025 Impact Report for details on what preferred materials may include.} by weight^{33 This excludes trims, which are estimated to be a small portion of our overall portfolio. (Trims are minor components added to a product for functional or decorative reasons, e.g., buttons, zippers, snaps.) “By weight” refers to the weight of materials in our products. This is measured using products procured (i.e., products associated with purchase orders created during the fiscal year).}
• Offer guests in 90% of global markets opportunities to extend product use, including repair or resale^{44 "Global markets" refers to markets where lululemon operates. This goal does not include outlets, pop-ups, airport stores, franchise markets, or markets with fewer than four stores. As of 2025, resale was only offered in the United States. In August 2026, we expanded to an online resale shop in Canada.}

As part of our preferred materials goal, we also have material-specific targets. See the 2025 Impact Report for details.

To support this work, we focus on key areas including Product & Material Innovation, Extended Product Use, and Product & Material Recycling.

Product & Material Innovation

Creating products with preferred materials is a core strategy for reducing adverse environmental impacts and working toward long-lasting product solutions.

Industry engagement is an essential component of this work. We strive to find scalable, long-term solutions, while taking incremental steps to contribute to shifting the industry away from conventional virgin materials. These efforts include working with preferred materials providers, investing in tools and identifying processes to evaluate the environmental impact of our products, co-sponsoring industry research, and investing in partnerships to pilot and advance circularity initiatives and innovative preferred materials. For more information on our initiatives related to preferred materials, please see the 2025 Impact Report.

Packaging

We continue to focus on packaging optimization to identify opportunities to reduce material use, improve efficiency, and use preferred packaging materials where operationally feasible.

We aim to work with suppliers that can provide preferred packaging materials, including those that contain recycled content or are verified through organizations such as Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI), Global Recycled Standard (GRS), or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). See more about our approach to forest-based packaging materials on the Policies & Guidelines page, which includes our Forestry Statement.

Circular Design

Integrating circular design^{55 Our circular design approach aims to enable next-use pathways (i.e., recycling, repair, and/or resale) by designing for recyclability and extended use, while increasing the use of preferred materials.} principles into our processes is an important step in working to create products that last longer and are easier to resell, repair, and recycle.

We continue to upskill product teams, and to test and learn how to integrate circular design principles into our production design and development practices.

Extended Product Use

We identify ways for our products to retain value and stay in use for as long as possible, including resale and repair.

Resale

Our Like New trade-in program offers guests the opportunity to trade in certain types of gently used gear in exchange for merchandise credit. We then sell these products—which are verified, quality-checked, and cleaned—through our online resale shop. (Some items may be recycled or resold through other channels if the criteria of our resale shop are not met.)

Our Like New trade-in program is offered at 100% of company-operated stores across the United States.^{66 Excludes outlets. Note that pop-ups in the United States also offer Like New, but pop-ups are not included in the definition of a store, consistent with lululemon external reporting.} In Canada, Like New is available through an online resale shop, based on a peer-to-peer model.

Repair

We consider repairs to be an important component of our circularity work. We offer repairs in select stores across Australia, China Mainland, Hong Kong SAR, Europe, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.^{77 Repair program excludes outlets, pop-ups, airport stores, franchise markets, and markets with fewer than four stores.} Repairs are completed by local repair partners trained to meet our quality standards.

Product & Material Recycling

We aim to resell, donate, recycle, or downcycle^{88 Downcycling is the process of converting a discarded material into something of lower value.} aged inventory and damages (e.g., damaged returns, in-store damages, quality issues), where operationally feasible. We have recycling partners in Canada, China Mainland, Taiwan, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These companies turn our products into components that can be reused, recycled, or responsibly disposed of across a variety of industries.

The infrastructure for textile-to-textile recycling is still limited. To support developments in this area, we work with partners to explore potential solutions related to the collection, sorting, preparation, and recycling of post-use apparel.