A circular economy requires the cooperation of various fields of expertise in order to cover the complete value chain from the production of the materials to manufacturing of textiles, from the logistics of waste collection to sorting and reprocessing the material. Based thereupon the project “ReFibreValue” was started. Involved are two companies, one is a major Austrian producer of industrial textiles looking for a way to recycle its products. These textiles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyamide (PA). The second company developed a new and efficient way for the separation of small particle plastic waste like textiles.
According to Eurostat, 2.17 million tonnes of textile waste were generated in Europe in 2018 (Eurostat, 2021). The trend of the last decades shows a significant increase in the production of textiles [1] and thus a delayed and also increasing amount of textile waste for which there is no closed recycling loop so far.
In addition, due to the expected development of raw material prices [2] (mainly crude oil) and the geopolitical situation, strong price increases are to be expected in the future for plastics and synthetic textiles. This makes the use of recycled materials (including textiles) interesting in several ways, as costs are lower and there is less dependence on imports.