SOLSTICE Newsletter

Transforming the Textile Sector: Regional Insights and Strategies for a Circular Economy

The textile industry faces critical challenges regarding sustainability, particularly in reducing waste and fostering a circular economy. One major issue is the lack of infrastructure and services that encourage Repair, Reuse, and Repurpose of textiles, which prevents citizens from fully engaging in circularity.

In response to these issues, the thought process behind the SOLSTICE project began with the recognition that existing systems in many regions across Europe do not sufficiently support circular practices. The initial focus is on understanding the current circular textiles ecosystem across 4 territories (Berlin, Prato, Grenoble and Catalonia), evaluating material flows, and identifying gaps in infrastructure.

SOLSTICE partner Circle Economy leads the current state analysis. Their work will increase our understanding of the circular textiles’ ecosystem in these territories, providing critical insights into the areas that require immediate action. This analysis will not only guide the selection of circular interventions to be piloted in these case-study regions but also contribute to the design of blueprints that can be adapted and implemented elsewhere.

SOLSTICE kicks off in Lyon!

Late May 2024, the SOLSTICE consortium met in-person in Lyon, France, for the kick-off meeting of the project! An opportunity to discuss the different aspects of SOLSTICE: supporting sustainable growth in the textile sector by raising customer awareness, enhancing recycling with new sorting methods, ensuring feedstock traceability using the Digital Product Passport, and providing data and guidelines to decision-makers.

SOLSTICE joins the ECOSYSTEX Community

With 34 EU-funded member projects focusing on textile sustainability, ECOSYSTEX is a joint initiative of the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency (REA), the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) and the Circular-Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking, and facilitated by the Textile ETP. This new network of textile circularity projects aims to create a long-term community of practice, ensuring collaboration across project consortia and lasting beyond the individual projects’ durations.

SOLSTICE brainstorms over data needs

In May 2024, SOLSTICE hosted a dynamic brainstorming workshop to dive deep into the profile data needs for our 4 EU cities and regions: Grenoble, Prato, Berlin, and Catalonia. The goal? To assess the current state of these regions, enhancing our understanding of the textiles industry's management, material flows, and circular economy interventions. This data will be used when setting up our 4 local demonstrations to test and refine SOLSTICE's innovative 5R approaches in real-world settings.

SOLSTICE at the HEREWEAR final event

In June 2024, Textile ETP presented the goals and initiatives of SOLSTICE at the final event of HEREWEAR in Berlin, Germany! Textile ETP was invited as a representative of the ECOSYSTEX community, which includes both SOLSTICE and HEREWEAR as members. This event celebrated the end of HEREWEAR's four-year project dedicated to developing sustainable, local, and bio-based textile solutions, and provided an opportunity to connect with other members of the ECOSYSTEX community.

SOLSTICE at the Circular Economy Workshop

In July 2024, SOLSTICE has been introduced by LEITAT in a Circular Economy Workshop organised by the Institut Industrial de Terrassa Gremi Tèxtil in collaboration with Leitat Technological Center and TÈXTILS.CAT. During the presentation, the activities aimed at improving textile recycling were explained. The event was a good opportunity to briefly explain the SOLSTICE project to the attendees from Catalan companies of the textile value chain.

SOLSTICE at the ECOSYSTEX Conference

In October 2024, some of our SOLSTICE project partners took part in the ECOSYSTEX Conference in Milan, Italy, to discuss the latest project developments and network with the growing ECOSYTEX community. We were also proud to see the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation highlighting SOLSTICE during his talk on new textiles research and innovation projects under Horizon Europe Cluster 6.

Meet Estelle Dalod from Axel’One

Can you tell us about your role in the SOLSTICE project?
I am the Project Coordinator. My role is to support the team and create connections between partners where applicable to make the consortium’s interactions smooth and innovative.

What has been your most significant contribution to the project so far?
As the project started in May this year, my most significant contribution was to set up some of the tools that will be used during the project as well as starting regular meetings with the WP leaders to assist them in their tasks, follow-up the action plan and review the risks and deliverables.

What’s your favourite aspect of working with the SOLSTICE team?
The team is wonderful, very pro-active and the WP leaders are very impressive in their roles. The particularity of this project is that it gathers entities with an extensive experience in European projects, which makes my project management quite easy and gives me the opportunity to focus on the technical WPs and innovations.

Can you share a memorable moment or achievement the team had together?
We’re only at M6, but thanks to ETP and the promotion on social network, supported by all the project partners we already achieved our first KPIs: we reached more than 500 followers on our LinkedIn page.
Also, a first batch of 350kg has been prepared by ALIA and is ready to be sorted by Pellenc ST. Purposely, this batch is mainly composed of synthetic textiles, which will be used by the SOLSTICE’s recycling partners to increase the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) of their chemical recycling demonstrators.

Do you have any personal goals or aspirations tied to this project?
My personal goal is to manage and coordinate our consortium the best I can so we can achieve the targets of this very ambitious project.

What are you most looking forward to as the project progresses?
With my technical background, and as R&D Director at Axel’One on Materials and Process Engineering, I have an affinity with the technical WPs such as the WP4 on sorting and the WP5 on chemical recycling development. On the other hand, as a concerned citizen in circular economy, I am looking forward to seeing the impact the project would have on societal aspects.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or REA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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