Sweden

Sweden. France and Denmark have issued a call for new global rules for exporting textile waste under the Basel Convention, in the backdrop of EU's exports of used textiles tripling in the last 20 years to countries in Africa and Asia who do not have the capacity to ensure proper waste management.

H&M Group has taken steps to scale textile-to-textile recycling. Textile as in polyester, promising a "lower impact on the planet.”

Swedish textile recycling pioneer Renewcell has decided to file for bankruptcy. The reason for the company going bust has nothing to do with either its product or facilities, but a global fashion  industry that is still unwilling to increase its uptake of recycled fibres.

Swedish nonprofit Axfoundation has been running the Swedish Wool Initiative, which aims for zero wool waste. The project has launched the Swedish Wool Standard, the first Swedish classification system for wool. Johan Sidenmark, Project Manager, Circular Economy, speaks at length about Swedish wool, and the Standard in particular.

Swedish gamechanger TreeToTextile was recently awarded the ITMF Start-up Award for creating a biobased textile fibre through an innovative chemical process that refines cellulose from wood and other cellulosic sources. Chief Executive Officer Roxana Barbieru talks alternative fibres.

OnceMore—the world’s first large-scale process for recycling blended fabrics—uses a proprietery process that combines post-consumer textile waste with renewable wood from responsibly managed forests to produce high-quality textile pulp. Åsa Degerman, Project Leader for OnceMore at forest industry group Södra talks recycling.

Finland's sustainable textile material company Spinnova and Swedish textile recycling leader Renewcell, in a first of its kind patented technology collaboration, are spinning textile waste-based fibre into new fibre without harmful chemicals, advancing circularity in the fashion industry.

There is an urgent imperative for the textile-apparel sector in Sweden to go sustainable and establish itself globally to reach its full potential, a new report on the country's export-dependent industry has underlined.

In the textiles-fashion ecosystem, news is usually ephemeral. But when Swedish innovator Renewcell dispatched the first shipment of its Circulose dissolving pulp to a customer, the excitement remained palpable for weeks on end. Tricia Carey, Chief Commercial Officer at Renewcell, talks about the flurry of activities at the company.

Lenzing and Södra are pooling their decades-long experience, knowledge and technology to develop the OnceMore process under a project, which will receive €10 million in funding from the European Union. The joint project will make a significant contribution to the EU’s action plan for circularity.