#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/

Countdown to Textiles Recycling Expo 2026: Brussels prepares for Europe’s textile recycling gathering

With only two weeks remaining until the start of the second edition of the Textiles Recycling Expo 2026, preparations are entering the final phase. The exhibition and conference, dedicated exclusively to textile recycling and circularity, will take place on 24–25 June 2026 at Brussels Expo and is expected to attract stakeholders from across the textile recycling value chain.

Indorama Ventures enables brands to scale circular textiles through proven, traceable supply chains

Indorama Ventures, a global leader in recycled polyester staple fibers and filament yarns, will exhibit at Textiles Recycling Expo in Brussels on June 24–25. At the event, the company will show how brands and textile manufacturers can build traceable, circular textile supply chains by working with proven partners who deliver recycled materials on an industrial scale.

RECOVER™ launches Recover™ Yarns to accelerate recycled cotton uptake

Recover™, a leading materials science company and one of the world’s largest producers of recycled cotton fiber, today announces the launch of Recover™ Yarns, a curated portfolio of ready-to-use yarn solutions designed to accelerate the adoption of recycled cotton across the apparel supply chain.

Uster’s new Recycling Opening Index guides spinners to the perfect blend

Uster AFIS 6 now offers the key data for better decisions when blending recycled fibers. Process control is decisive in determining the quality and economic outcome. The new R Recycling Module of AFIS 6 introduces the Recycling Opening Index (ROI), so spinners can optimize their circularity credentials. It was officially launched at ITM 2026 in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Textile Exchange publishes comprehensive polyester LCA study

Textile Exchange has released a new Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study on polyester, providing detailed data on the environmental impacts of both virgin and recycled polyester production. The study aims to strengthen understanding across the fashion, textile and apparel industries and support more informed decision-making regarding polyester sourcing and production.

Keeping products moving with Swedish automation at FILTECH 2026

At FILTECH 2026, taking place in Cologne from June 30th to July 2nd, members of TMAS – the Swedish textile machinery association – will highlight how the country’s engineering expertise is enabling filtration manufacturers to increase productivity, improve traceability and reduce dependence on labour-intensive manual processes.

Global Mmeeting of textile technologies, ITM 2026, attracts great interest

ITM 2026, one of the world's most prestigious organizations in the field of textile technologies, opened its doors with the participation of over 1,000 companies and company representatives from 59 countries, as well as thousands of professional visitors from nearly 100 country. Attracting thousands of international visitors on its first day, ITM 2026 once again demonstrated its status as a global meeting point for the textile industry with its advanced technologies on display, newly established business connections, and record-breaking international participation.