It has been a busy few months behind the scenes at Worn Again Technologies and we have become a member of some industry initiatives. These give us the opportunity to interact in working groups to learn best practices to prepare our technology to enter the market. While their motivations vary, we all are working towards a common goal of a world which eliminates textile waste, increases recycling rates and propels the industry towards circularity.

Read below about our new engagements with Textile Exchange, EuRIC and PetCore.

Textile Exchange 

We are proud to work alongside Textile Exchange as a supporting member. They offer deep insight into textile supply chain and they have been leading programmes to accelerate the use of preferred materials as well as certification and standards to ensure transparency across the global textile industry. Collaborating with their wide network of brands, retailers and suppliers, we will be able to provide crucial elements to build best practise around circular raw materials.

MISSION

Textile Exchange inspires and equips people to accelerate sustainable practices in the textile value chain. We focus on minimizing the harmful impacts of the global textile industry and maximizing its positive effects.

APPROACH

Textile Exchange engages and catalyzes the textile industry across the supply chain through partnerships and collaborations, building knowledge and capacity to inform and educate. We further leverage our influence to create action, change and collective impact.

GOALS

• Embed sustainability into evolving business and supply chain strategies
• Make it easier for companies to adapt to changing opportunities and requirements in textile sustainability
• Ensure that actions taken toward sustainability result in real and meaningful change

VISION

Textile Exchange envisions a global textile industry that protects and restores the environment and enhances lives.

For more information, click here: TextileExchange

EuRIC

We are delighted that EuRIC accepted our application. This gives us the opportunity to contribute in providing inputs on any EU policy and regulatory initiative which could have an impact on the collection, sorting and preparing for re-use and for end of use textile recycling. Support and interaction with European policy makers is crucial to prepare our next steps of technology scale up we have been working for.

EuRIC Textiles aims at promoting, representing and protecting the collective interests of the European textiles re-use and recycling industry. This industry consists of companies and organizations who collect, sort for re-use and recycling, transport and market used textiles, shoes and accessories. The Textiles Branch was founded in 2019 when textiles re-use and recycling became one of the top priorities within the European Union.

EuRIC Textiles Members are national re-use and recycling federations as well as companies in lieu active throughout Europe in the field of collecting and processing post-consumer textiles.

The primary focus of EuRIC Textiles will be:

• Monitoring the implementation of the EU’s Textiles Strategy;
• Promoting extended producer responsibility (EPR) for new textiles with eco-modulation of fees;
• Supporting eco-design criteria for textiles;
• Encouraging end-of-waste (EoW) criteria for textiles which have been prepared for re-use;
• Foster recycled content targets for textiles to pull the demand for quality recycled fibers.

For more information, click here: EuRIC

PetCore

Our polymer recycling technology is effectively a dual process. It can take in end-of-use pure polyester and polycotton blended endof-use textiles on one process stream, and PET bottles and plastic packaging in a separate process stream. In the latter, our technology is able to retain PET in polymer form and extract PET pellets which can be reintroduced into the production chain with the same qualities as its virgin equivalent and with a lower environmental footprint (less water, heat and energy are used, releasing fewer CO₂ emissions).

Becoming member of PetCore will give us the chance to explore opportunities of scale-up in the plastic business and learn operations and requirements in this industry.

Petcore Europe, based in Brussels, is the association representing the complete PET value chain in Europe since 1993. Its mission is:

• to ensure that the entire PET industry is well aligned to enhance its value and sustainable growth,
• to represent the PET industry before the European institutions and other stakeholders,
• to ensure that PET is positioned as an outstanding packaging material and recognised as environmentally sound,
• to support and validate innovative packaging solutions from a recycling perspective and
• to work with all interested parties to ensure a continuous increase of PET post-consumer collection and recycling.

For more information, click here: Petcore