Projects
Mixed textile waste streams, a matter of concern.
In the past twenty years, Europe has been facing a significant textile waste issue. Crunching the numbers, Europe generates 7 – 7.5 million tons of textile waste annually, yet only 30-35% is collected separately and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing. As a result, millions of tons of textiles, still largely sourced from virgin materials, end up in landfills and incinerators, stressing the environment from the beginning to the end of the value chain.
Being the most important fibres in the textile industry, cotton (CO) and polyester (PES) are widely used to produce COPES blends, which generate mixed textile waste streams and make recycling of both fibres an extremely complex procedure.
PESCO-UP Project, designing the best recycling routes.
From 2025, with the intention of laying the groundwork for circularity, EU Member States will be required to collect separately all the textile waste, nevertheless, no systemization for logical and preferred recycling routes has existed until now. Hence, with the ambition of making fibre-to-fibre recycling a reality, the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA) draws up PESCO-UP Project – Textile fibre recycling from mixed streams of PESCO textiles.
The project will identify the most feasible recycling routes for polyester and cotton fibres from mixed textile waste, outlining key tools that include automated sorting, a Digital Product Passport (DPP) for data sharing, advanced purification technologies and new appealing final applications.
VEGEA, a partner in textile.
In order to cover all the textile recycling processes throughout the value chain, a consortium of novel textile recycling technology developers from nine countries has been invited together for PESCO-UP ambitious project. Among them, VEGEA is going to pitch in with its deepened knowledge on innovative biomaterials.
Starting from the recycled polyester fractions obtained by cellulose dissolution and acidic hydrothermal treatment, VEGEA will be developing polyurethane coatings and new synthetic leathers with properties equal or superior to the high-quality standards of footwear, automotive, furnishing, clothing and bags markets. VEGEA’s prototypes will represent new business opportunities for COPES recycled textiles, bringing significant value to the recycling process in its entirety.
