Project description
Sorting out Europe’s textile waste crisis
Europe faces an extensive textile waste problem, annually generating more than 7 million tonnes of discarded fabrics. Despite this volume, only about 35 % is collected separately, with less than 1 % being recycled into new clothing. Most of this waste comprises cotton, polyester, or their blends, with considerable amounts of CO/PES blends being disposed of yearly due to technical and economic hurdles in recycling. In this context, the EU-funded PESCO-UP project is dedicated to developing a sustainable and economically viable process to upcycle mixed CO/PES textile waste into new cotton and polyester products. Through advanced sorting, purification, and separation technologies, PESCO-UP aims to transform this waste into valuable resources.
Objective
Europe has an extensive textile waste problem - annually 7 –7.5 million tons of textile waste is generated, but only about 30 - 35 % of the generated waste is collected separately and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing. Collection of textile waste will become mandatory in EU member states by 2025. Most of the textile are cotton, polyester, or their blends. Considerable amounts of CO/PES blends are disposed every year due to the technical challenge and/or economic viability of recycling.
The objective of PESCO-UP is to develop a sustainable and economically and technologically viable process of the mixed CO/PES textile waste to be upcycled into cotton originated and polyester products. The processes should enable for production of new products without quality restriction and of products with identical properties and performances as those produced using primary resources. The main tools to achieve this are the development of automated identification and sorting methods for textiles, Digital Product Passport with a marketplace-style dataspace for sharing data describing material streams to support matching of supply and demand of textile materials, and the process development of purification, separation technologies as well as the technologies that utilize the separated cotton and PES fractions for the valuable products.
PESCO-UP will ensure that sustainable fiber-to-fiber recycling becomes a reality in Europe. This will turn a societal waste problem into a business opportunity for European SMEs and bring the textile industry back to Europe. At the same time dependency on oil and cotton based raw materials will decrease, which will mean reduction in CO2 emission and reduced water consumption. The use of developed digital methods and digital product passport can be widened in other industrial sectors to solve their recycling and sustainability issues.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligenceexpert systems
- engineering and technologychemical engineeringseparation technologies
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata exchange
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
02150 Espoo
Finland
See on map
Participants (20)
51010 TARTU
See on map
02150 Espoo
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
2000 Maribor
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
1048 Riga
See on map
7821 AT Emmen
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
6991AJ RHEDEN
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
2400 Mol
See on map
02150 Espoo
See on map
Legal entity other than a subcontractor which is affiliated or legally linked to a participant. The entity carries out work under the conditions laid down in the Grant Agreement, supplies goods or provides services for the action, but did not sign the Grant Agreement. A third party abides by the rules applicable to its related participant under the Grant Agreement with regard to eligibility of costs and control of expenditure.
85194 Sundsvall
See on map
21530 Paimio
See on map
1000 Bruxelles / Brussel
See on map
8023 DW ZWOLLE
See on map
1040 Bruxelles / Brussel
See on map
1070 BRUXELLES
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
09125 Chemnitz
See on map
12580 Benicarlo
See on map
Legal entity other than a subcontractor which is affiliated or legally linked to a participant. The entity carries out work under the conditions laid down in the Grant Agreement, supplies goods or provides services for the action, but did not sign the Grant Agreement. A third party abides by the rules applicable to its related participant under the Grant Agreement with regard to eligibility of costs and control of expenditure.
06850 KULLOO
See on map
24121 Bergamo
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
51003 TARTU
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
68390 Sausheim
See on map
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.