The textile industry is responsible for about 92 million tons of textile waste per year, most of which is landfilled or incinerated. Less than 1% of the 100 billion textiles manufactured annually worldwide are recycled and regenerated into high-quality products. Thus, the textile industry is still far away from a circular economy. Technologies for recycling and reprocessing for textile products, which are characterised by a complex mix of materials, are scarce. The logistics for collecting, sorting and separating textile waste leave many questions unanswered.

Textile-based lightweight construction is a basis for a resource-efficient transport sector. But how do we recycle the expensive and complex material mixes, once cars, planes and other vehicles have reached the end of their service life? Incineration is not a solution for the future!

The necessary transformation process to a circular economy must incorporate all stakeholders of the textile industry: From the raw material along the textile production chain to the users of the products - including reprocessing and recycling, also in the sense of upcycling. Both, regulatory intervention in the market and changes in the attitudes and behaviour of market participants are required. Research must develop innovative and sustainable solutions, which have to be validated and scaled for market use. Classic linear business models will be supplemented or even replaced by new, digitally based value added networks. The textile sector must open up to neighbouring sectors in order to exploit synergy effects - e.g. the use of agricultural waste as raw material for textile fibres. When it comes to raw materials, the textile industry must not be in competition with global food production. In this respect, there are no simple solutions; the research questions are complex and can only be solved with a holistic approach and in a transdisciplinary manner.

Against this background, the ITA Group is presenting itself as the International Centre for Sustainable Textiles. The ITA Group is formed around the Institut für Textiltechnik of RWTH Aachen University (ITA) as a core with several spin-offs and branches to address specific market needs and topics.

ITA's goal is the holistic biotransformation of textile technology and thus the use of biological principles for cycle-oriented value creation processes. This includes, for example, the closing of raw material cycles, the reduction of energy and water consumption for production processes and the principle of "design for recycling" as a fundamental paradigm of product development. An existing flagship is the innovation space BIOTEXFUTURE. The aim is to develop a biobased and sustainable raw material base for plastics, its application in the textile industry and to address an overall societal change towards a bioeconomy. Another flagship project with major contribution from ITA is Bio4MatPro, the competence centre for the biological transformation of materials science and production technology.