- An EU-funded initiative has reached a significant milestone in the creation of a master plan for the efficient recycling of used textiles
- Extended solutions will soon be tested throughout Europe.-wide level and the possibility of regional replication
- Additionally, local community actors will be involved in the development and enhancement of its plan.
[January 2025]
Finding answers to the expanding problem of textile waste is becoming more and more important on a European and worldwide scale. With the creation of a knowledge-based masterplan and blueprint to create and illustrate efficient textile recovery, reuse, waste valorisation, and recycling procedures, the EU-funded project tExtended is leading the way in this field of innovation.
Following two years of intensive study, Extended is now moving into the second stage of the project, where it will continue to create its Conceptual Framework, a knowledge-based approach that focusses on quality retention. In order to demonstrate its ability to cut textile waste by 80%, Extended is also getting ready to test it in a real-scale demonstration of the Industrial-Urban Symbiosis collaboration.
Our effort on creating a blueprint is something we are eager to advance. “We believe that our solutions will strengthen competitiveness and resilience through sustainability and digitalisation, while also generating new business,” says Dr. Pirjo Heikkilä, Extended Project Coordinator at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, who notes that the textile industry still lacks the infrastructure and technologies necessary to support the transition to a circular model.
All of the countries in the extended consortium—Finland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Ireland, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland—will host these project activities in various formats. Extended will also do localised regional studies to assess the replication potential, but the actual scale demonstration will be conducted in a broad European partnership.
Through the involvement of local community actors in project activities, the four-year project, which is supported by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program, also focusses on the social component of the textile sector. tExtended will increase individuals’ understanding of the sustainability and circularity of textiles by having them participate in various initiatives pertaining to pre-sorting, returning, and used textiles.
The initiative has already achieved notable milestones along the way to creating the extended vision for a sustainable textile environment. In particular, the outcomes of the enhancement of upcycling procedures and the creation of a data-driven circular ecosystem in the future will impact the forthcoming efforts to achieve the Extended targets.