The EU-funded project tExtended is spearheading innovation in this area with the development of a blueprint, a knowledge-based masterplan to develop and demonstrate effective textile recovery, reuse, waste valorisation, and recycling processes.
After two years of extensive research, tExtended is now entering the second phase of work, where the project continues developing its Conceptual Framework, a knowledge-based solution that targets the retention of quality. tExtended is also preparing for testing it in an Industrial-Urban symbiosis collaborative real scale demonstrator, with the goal of showing its potential to reduce textile waste by 80%.
These project activities will take place in different formats in all the countries of the tExtended consortium, including Finland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Ireland, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. The real scale demonstrator will be carried out in wide collaboration on European level, but tExtended will also produce localized regional studies for the evaluation of the replication potential.
The four-year project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, also focuses now on the social aspect of the textile sector by involving local community actors in the project activities. Through citizens’ participation in different actions on pre-sorting and returning and used textiles, tExtended will raise their awareness about the sustainability and circularity of textiles.
The road towards the development of the tExtended masterplan for a sustainable textile ecosystem has already brought the project to reach relevant successes. Especially, the results obtained about improving upcycling processes and in designing a future data-driven circular ecosystem will influence the upcoming work towards the tExtended goals.
