A new project, called Solstice, has been launched to work towards sustainable growth in the EU textiles sector by raising customer awareness, enhancing recycling with new sorting methods, ensuring feedstock traceability using the Digital Product Passport, and providing data and guidelines to decision-makers.
- The project will be spread over 42 months, aiming at advancing climate-neutral and circular economy practices within the textiles industry. A consortium of 24 partners will work on the project.
- The Solstice project is based on a holistic approach that encompasses all stages of waste prevention, guided by a 5R strategy: Reject/Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Reuse and Recycle. These solutions will be tested and refined in demonstrations conducted in four European cities and regions: Grenoble (France), Berlin (Germany), Prato (Italy), and Catalonia (Spain).
- Partnering with businesses and clusters across the textile value chain is central to the project’s mission. Through these collaborations, Solstice seeks to unlock concrete business opportunities to accelerate the adoption of innovative solutions that align with the circular economy.
- Solstice aims to save up to 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2030.
THE 5R APPROACH: The strategy will be driven by:
- Refuse/Reduce: The broad engagement across the textile value chain effectively will seek to raise citizen awareness about the need to change clothing behaviour.
- Reuse: It will facilitate garment reuse by developing guidelines on sorting for resale, and encourage consumers to extend the lifespan of clothing by returning unused items to collection points.
- Repair: In four cities/regions, collaboration with repairers, self-repair service companies, and other stakeholders will be promoted. By leveraging its network, the project will form partnerships aimed to promote clothing repair initiatives.
- Recycle: The project will develop and demonstrate four chemical recycling technologies, along with associated business use-cases to facilitate the transition towards a circular economy for clothing.
- Repurpose: It will explore repurposing options for products that cannot be repaired, and engage with citizens and stakeholders in brainstorming on alternative uses. The project also aims to develop a standardised manual for repairing and repurposing textiles.
THE TARGETS: Solstice’s strategic targets for a sustainable transformation of the textile value chain.
- Minimise and transform textile waste into renewable resources for the EU textiles industry.
- Boost the value of newly collected textile waste through smart sorting.
- Highlight the reusability of textile polymers, coatings and high-value plastics through chemical recycling.
- Analyse the benefits of better textile collection, sorting, and recycling, facilitating the adoption of solutions across the value chain.
- Enable the broad implementation of Solstice solutions.
