The production and consumption of textile products continue to grow, together with their impact on the environment, due to a lack of reuse, repair and recycling of materials. Quality, durability, and recyclability are often not being set as priorities in the design and manufacturing of clothing (EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, March 2022).
Image Credit: AIMPLAS
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 sustainable, novel, and inclusive large-scale European value chains.
The project will cover most parts of the textile sector by working on 2 material groups representing almost 90% of all textile fibre materials (polyester, and cotton/cellulosic fibres), and focusing on products from 3 sub-sectors experiencing varying 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 3 pilots to demonstrate the feasibility and value of repair and disassembly, 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 the infrastructure and material flows, digitally enhance sorting operations (for reuse and recycling), and raise awareness among the consumers and the textile industry.
As part of the CISUTAC consortium, AIMPLAS will contribute its expertise in the extraction technology for removal of inks, dyes and other surface contaminations. This will enable large scale thermoplastic recycling of polyester textile and allow a wider range of textile waste to be used as input material because of the integrated purification and decontamination step.
CISUTAC is a Horizon Europe project, co-funded by the European Union. It started on 1 September 2022 and will last for 48 months. Led by Centexbel, the Belgian research centre for textiles and plastics, the CISUTAC consortium is EU-wide including global leading brands and companies, CSOs, RTOs and EU associations. The diversity within the consortium allows CISUTAC to cover all required expertise and infrastructure over the full novel circular value chain. The full list of partners is available here. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement No 101060375.
More information on the CISUTAC project on its website: www.cisutac.eu