The SOLSTICE project supports sustainable growth in the textile sector by raising consumer awareness, improving recycling with new sorting methods, ensuring raw material traceability through the Digital Product Passport and providing data and guidelines to decision makers.
SOLSTICE will propose 4 replicable systemic solutions for the territorial deployment of the circular economy (CEC) in the textile industrial sector. All steps of waste prevention and management will be implemented, through a 5R strategy: Refuse/Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle. The solutions developed can be interrelated with the plastics value chain.
For the 4Rs: Refuse/Reduce, Repair, Reuse:
Involve different stakeholders (territories, local businesses, local authorities, citizens) to review their supply chains/behaviour, and become more circular and sustainable.
Determine and map the current state, investigate and analyze relevant circular interventions by territory,
Create a methodology and models of CEC interventions to be tested/piloted.
Recycle: Demonstrate innovative chemical recycling technologies, capable of effectively treating part of the main polymer streams in textiles and plastics (polyester, elastane, polyamide, polyurethane) under mild conditions. The technologies allow recycling multi-component materials and complex streams and recycling textile into textile (closed loop) or into value-added applications (open loop). They are easily adaptable and will allow local recycling.
Establish a traceability system based on a Digital Product Passport and designed in relation to existing initiatives.
The demonstration will take place in 4 representative EU territories. Knowledge transfer and cooperation between the cities and regions involved, as well as with other stakeholders and projects, will ensure an optimised development and deployment of the new circular concepts, as well as the replicability of the concept and maximum impact. The deployment of SOLSTICE could save between 3,6 and 9 Mt of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2030.
You can find more information about SOLSTICE at this link.
