Business

EURATEX, Partners Launch New Horizon Europe Innovation Project On Circular & Sustainable Textiles

Launched last week, the new Horizon Europe project CISUTAC will support the transition to a circular and sustainable textile sector. As part of a consortium of 27 partners working on the project, EURATEX will work towards facilitating the Circular Economy transition. While the production and consumption of textile products continue to grow, so does the impact on the environment caused by a lack of reuse, repair and recycle of materials. Quality, durability, and recyclability are often not being set as priorities in the design and manufacturing of garments (EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, March 2022). CISUTAC aims to remove current bottlenecks in order to increase textile circularity in Europe. The objective is to minimise the sector’s total environmental impact by developing new, sustainable and integrated large-scale European value chains. The project will include most parts of the textile sector: comprising the two groups of fibres that represent almost 90% of all textile fibres (polyester and cotton/cellulose), and focusing on products from three sub-sectors experiencing most circularity bottlenecks (fashion garments, sports and outdoor goods, and workwear). CISUTAC will follow a holistic approach covering the technical, sectoral and socio-economic aspects, and will perform three pilot phases to demonstrate the feasibility and value of:

Repair and disassembling
Sorting (for reuse and recycling)
Circular garments through fibre-to-fibre recycling and design for circularity

To realise these pilots, the consortium partners will:

Develop semi-automated workstations
Analyse infrastructure and material flows
Digitally enhance sorting operations (for reuse and recycling)
Raise awareness among consumers and the textile industry

As part of the CISUTAC consortium, EURATEX will facilitate the circular economy transition, liaise with other projects and initiatives, support the development of training and education material, including masterclasses and MOOC, raise awareness in Europe of the environmental impact of textile and provide input for policy, standardisation and certification to facilitate the transition to the circular economy. Meanwhile, EC President von der Leyen announced initiatives aimed at tackling the dramatic energy crisis which Europe is facing. The Social Partners from the European textile industry welcome some proposals, such as decoupling the TTF gas price from the electricity market and the proposed amendment to the state-aid framework. However, Euratex believes the Commission proposal is not ambitious enough and will come at the cost of losing European industrial capacity and jobs. Already today, several textile companies have decided to stop or relocate their production outside the EU, and chances are that they will never come back. This goes against the EU’s ambition to build a resilient textile industry, reduce external dependency and offer quality jobs. Dirk Vantyghem, EURATEX Director General commented: “Our companies are preparing for a green and digital transition, which requires significant efforts and investments. The current energy crisis jeopardises that entire process. We risk losing a unique opportunity to move our sector towards a sustainable and competitive future.”