Circular & Sustainable Textiles & Clothing

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).

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.

CISUTAC covers a relevant part of the textile sector and shows how to close loops at product and at material level.

Project groups from, among others, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Austria and Belgium will, together with RISE, work on, the development of semi-automatic workstations, analyse infrastructure and material flows, improvement of digital sorting operations (for reuse and recycling) and look at activities to increase awareness with consumers and the textile industry!

RISE participates in several work packages and will have main responsibility for mapping material flows, scenario analysis, development of an open data standard for information transfer, circular design and sustainability analyses. An important part of the work is also to make recommendations for the upcoming legislative process.