European fashion firms and textile suppliers encounter obstacles on their path to becoming circular. A new collaboration, Cisutac, intends to remove this.
The four-year Circular and Sustainable Textile and Clothing (Cisutac) program aims to break down existing bottlenecks and create new, circular, and integrated large-scale European value chains. It has 27 partners that have been assured co-funding from the European Union (EU). It intends to expand the capacity for waste clothing to be reused, repaired, and recycled.
Centexbel, a research facility for textiles and plastics in Belgium in charge of coordinating the entire project, creating the pilots, and supporting the Life Cycle Assessments, a technique for calculating the environmental effects of a commercial product. Sharing information and the project’s findings is the responsibility of the research platform Textile ETP.
The partners include textile associations like Euratex or the fiber producer Lenzing besides clothing retailers like Decathlon. Cisutac will operate through three pilot projects, the first of which aims to maximize the value of pre-existing objects, particularly for reuse.
The second project is about avoiding mistakes, such as adding the wrong materials, when separating textiles for recycling. One program is trying to lessen the amount of manual labor and the level of staff knowledge needed for sorting, dismantling, and repairing. The pilots’ scope covers about 90 percent of all textile fibers, including cotton and polyester, as well as the three industries of fashion apparel, sports and outdoor wear, and workwear.
Cisutac aims to remove barriers to a circular textile industry in EU
