#Recycling / Circular Economy

2025-04-16

€11.6 million boost for circularity research – textile industry in the spotlight

The shift toward a circular economy is gaining momentum — and the textile industry is taking center stage. With €11.6 million in new funding, the VolkswagenStiftung has approved nine ambitious research projects under the initiative “Circularity with Recycled and Biogenic Raw Materials.” The goal: to enable closed-loop systems that reduce waste, reclaim resources, and rethink how materials are used and reused — especially in sectors like textiles, where resource intensity and waste volumes remain high.

The textile and fashion industries are among the largest contributors to global material consumption and waste. Fast fashion, synthetic fibers, and limited recycling infrastructures pose major environmental challenges. While millions of garments are discarded each year, only a fraction is recycled into new fibers. The rest ends up in landfills, incinerators, or is downcycled into low-value applications.

To tackle this, the VolkswagenStiftung is specifically funding practical and scalable innovations that address material recovery and circular production in real-world contexts. The call for proposals, which closed on March 1, 2024, received 83 applications from across the natural and technical sciences. Nine projects were selected — including two with direct relevance for the textile sector.

Two textile-focused projects exemplify this shift:

CloseT – Closing the Loop for Used Textiles

Lead Institutions: Süddeutsches Kunststoff-Zentrum (SKZ), Würzburg (Dr. Hatice Malatyali); Fraunhofer IFAM, Bremen (Prof. Dr. Andreas Hartwig)

Funding: ~€1.1 million

Recycling worn-out clothing remains one of the textile sector’s greatest unsolved challenges. While garments unsuitable for reuse are typically downcycled or burned, many still contain high-quality fibers such as polyester that could be recovered and reprocessed — if the right technology exists.

The CloseT project aims to close this gap with a chemical recycling process tailored to post-consumer textile waste. Drawing from established methods in PET bottle recycling, the team is developing a scalable solution to regenerate mixed fiber blends into like-new textile materials. If successful, CloseT could provide a blueprint for industrial-scale fiber-to-fiber recycling — a gamechanger for sustainable fashion and circular production.

HotCircularity – Biodegradable Alternatives to Microplastics from Industrial Waste

Lead Institutions: University of Duisburg-Essen (Prof. Dr. Bettina Siebers, Dr. Christopher Bräsen); TU Wien (Prof. Dr. Oliver Spadiut)

Funding: ~€1.4 million

Microplastics are ubiquitous in the textile sector — from fiber shedding during washing to intentional use in coatings for fertilizers and seeds. HotCircularity explores a radical alternative: replacing synthetic microplastics with biodegradable lipids, produced by thermophilic microorganisms that thrive on industrial waste such as crude glycerol from biodiesel production.

The project aims to develop a low-cost, industrial-scale biofactory that transforms waste into high-performance biopolymers — offering new, circular material options for functional textile coatings and other applications where biodegradability is key.

With textile circularity now recognized as both an environmental imperative and a strategic innovation frontier, the projects funded under this initiative represent critical steps forward. They also reflect a wider trend: the textile industry, once a symbol of linear production, is becoming a laboratory for circular design, materials science, and cross-sector collaboration.

More textile projects are:

Textile Materials Designed for Circularity (teXirc) (Prof. Dr. Stefan Mecking, Universität Konstanz; Prof. Dr. Michael R. Buchmeiser, Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung, Denkendorf; Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schwaneberg, RWTH Aachen; rd. 1,4 Mio. Euro)

ADMIRATION - Accelerated Discovery of Living Fiber-reinforced Mineral Composite Materials for Circular Construction (Prof. Martin Ostermann, Dr. Achim Weber, Universität Stuttgart; Prof. Dr. Wilfried Weber, INM – Leibniz-Institut für Neue Materialien, Saarbrücken; rd. 1,4 Mio. Euro)

Plasma-assisted recycling of glass-fibre reinforced plastics (Dr.-Ing. Diego Gonzalez, Leibniz-Institut für Plasmaforschung und Technologie, Greifswald; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter Bathen, Institut für Energie und Umwelttechnik (IUTA), Duisburg; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Gräbner, Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg; rd. 1,4 Mio. Euro)

MyPro - A Platform for Sustainable Mycelium Material Production using genetically engineered filamentous Fungi (Dr. Hannes Hinneburg, Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Polymerforschung IAP, Potsdam; Dr. Gita Naseri, Max-Planck-Forschungsstelle für die Wissenschaft der Pathogene, Berlin; rd. 1,3 Mio. Euro)

More information on the program and funded projects is available via the foundation’s website.

https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/

Advanced Recycling Conference 2026 to showcase innovations – Call for abstracts

The call for abstracts is now open for the Advanced Recycling Conference (ARC) 2026, taking place on 17–18 November 2026 in Cologne, Germany, and online. Europe’s leading platform for advanced recycling brings together hands-on solutions and cutting-edge research on recycling technologies for various waste streams like plastics, polymers, textiles or automotive, highlighting progress towards a circular renewable carbon economy.

Europe needs tipping point to scale textile-to-textile recycling, BCG and ReHubs say

A new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and ReHubs, titled “Advancing Textile Circularity – Europe’s textile waste challenge: Scaling Textile-to-Textile requires enabling mechanisms”, highlights the urgent need for systemic action to tackle Europe’s growing textile waste and scale a circular textile economy.

Freudenberg Performance Materials presents Mehlerheytex and Filc at Techtextil 2026

Freudenberg Performance Materials will showcase textile innovations that increase efficiency, performance and sustainability in industry and mobility at Techtextil 2026. For the first time since the merger of Mehler Texnologies and Heytex, the MehlerHeytex brand will make its debut as a leading expert in coated technical textiles. Moreover, Freudenberg Performance Materials Filc (Filc), specialist for advanced needlepunch nonwovens and laminated materials, will present its groundbreaking solutions for automotive applications. Filc customers can benefit from the perfect combination of functionality, comfort and sustainability. The Freudenberg Performance Materials experts are looking forward to welcoming visitors to the trade fair at Stand A11 in Hall 11.0 from April 21 – 24, 2026.

Fraunhofer IAP paves the way for "Green" carbon fibers

A new pilot plant in Guben is set to enable the production of bio-based carbon fibers. The plant is part of the Carbon Lab Factory Lausitz and will make an important contribution to the transformation of the Lausitz region—from a traditionally raw material- and basic industry-oriented region to a hub for innovative high-performance materials. The German federal government and the state of Brandenburg are providing the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP with 53.3 million euros for this purpose.