MSTERDAM – A group of 12 textile industry stakeholders, including brands, manufacturers and innovators, has launched a new project in a bid to look at recycling options for household textile waste.
Over a three-year period, the T-REX Project will collect and sort household textile waste. It is claimed the project will demonstrate the full recycling process of polyester, polyamide 6, and cellulosic materials from textile waste into new garments.
Simultaneously, the project aims to demonstrate sustainable and economically feasible business models for each actor along the value chain, conduct lifecycle analysis of the circular process, integrate digital tools that streamline the process of closed loop textile recycling, and produce circular design guidelines
“The project ultimately aims to contribute to a paradigm shift through understanding and identifying the infrastructure, technology, and policy needed to encourage the growth of circular value chains,” the companies said in a statement.
The project aims to, “contribute to understanding and identifying the infrastructure,
technology and policy needed to encourage the growth of circular value chains in the
textile industry.” A press statement said the partners will work towards, “developing a systematic approach to addressing the problem of textile waste, resource preservation and reduction of the environmental footprint of the fashion industry.”
Veolia, will lead the post-consumer textile waste collection, sorting, and division to work with the feedstock needs of the respective textile recycling technologies of Infinited Fiber Company, BASF, and CuRe.
The recycled fibres will be converted to yarn by European manufacturers Linz Textil and TWD Fibres, from which adidas will create demonstration products with end of life in mind.
FAU will support the project with analytical expertise to maximise the conversion of multi-fibre textile waste into recycled fibre, and Aalto University will conduct citizens’
engagement activities to raise awareness of textile recycling practices and analyse social
impact.
Fashion for Good will lead industry communications, and conduct business viability and
digital integration activities, supported by Quantis and Arapaha who will collect and
analyse data from across the value chain for sustainability assessments and digital
solution recommendations.
Editor’s Note: We seem to have been seeing these kind of feasibility studies in the textile-textile recycling space for at least five years, and possibly more. Is anybody actually keeping track of them all? Do we have any findings from previous studies yet? And given that the likes of Re:newcell are now on the brink of commercialisation in this segment, why do we need yet more feasibility studies? At some point we hope to collate all he studies currently underway in this space and update readers.