STREP · STREAMLINED TEXTILE WASTE STREAMS FOR RECYCLING OPTIMIZATION

STREP ambition is to empower the European textile (recycling) industry with a solution for sustainable processing of textile waste by developing and rolling out of a novel and systemic waste sorting solution based on cost-efficient sensor and automation technology, self-learning AI, as well as a novel solution for textile disintegration and mechanical recycling. Furthermore, STREP develops chemical recycling solutions, to facilitate the production of a 100% closed loop recycled yarn based exclusively on post-consumer textile waste, creating a perfect balance between sustainability, cost, and quality. The overall ambition is enhancing European industrial sustainability, competitiveness, and resource independence through producing more sustainable products, while increasing consumer benefits.STREP integrates value chain, product quality, and environmental impact perspectives in its different phases. Two of the innovations are placed in the pre-consumer phases. One of these relates to developing and testing guidelines and matrix that can support product design phase, and implementing recycling-friendly assembly of textile products. The other one innovates the traceability of the products and the related waste to enable allocating different product (waste) streams to the right flows and processing alternatives. The rest of the innovations are positioned after the textile waste collection and include: technology for recognition and removal of hardware and prints as well as characterizing the waste (fiber length, humidity, dirt, etc.), developing innovative recycling methods based on solvolysis, enzymatic processing, pyrolysis and hydrothermal conversion to treat the appropriate textile waste fractions depending on the composition and the length of the fibers. Targeted products are new fibers out of mechanical and chemical recycling processes as well as (bio-crude) oils and biochar out of the textile fibers that cannot be used in new fibers.