The goal of the new Circular.Tèxtils.Cat project, launching this November, is to recover the waste generated by the technical textiles sector in Catalonia to develop new products and promote the circular economy. This initiative is driven by Tèxtils.CAT and the FITEX Foundation (Private Foundation for Textile Innovation), with support from the Catalan Waste Agency and a budget of 33,000 euros.
Based on the identification of various textile waste streams generated by different member companies of the AEI Tèxtils cluster, the project will establish both a physical and virtual (web-based) marketplace to detect and categorize these residues. A hackathon will follow, bringing together students from the materials engineering department of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and ELISAVA (Faculty of Design and Engineering of the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia), along with designers and members of Catalan fashion companies. This collaborative event aims to develop products and circular business ideas using the identified waste, and the project will assess the business feasibility of the proposed solutions or concepts.
Once the project concludes, the promoting entities aim to maintain the momentum by expanding the waste libraries with new samples and fostering connections between companies from different sectors.
This initiative will benefit the Catalan technical textile sector, mainly composed of SMEs, by creating new opportunities to reduce the industry’s environmental impact. Additionally, fashion and home textile companies will gain access to sustainable, high-value raw materials with technical properties. The project seeks to structure the textile and fashion industries towards a circular production model and facilitate the transition of SMEs within the sector.