2' min read
2' min read
We are only a few days away from 1 January, when with the New Year the European Directive 2018/85 requiring separate collection of textile waste (see fiche on the left) will come into force. Despite delays and bureaucratic difficulties, Italy, as Europe's leading producer, is a pioneer in textile recycling. And as is happening in other countries on the continent, investments in the sector are also multiplying: the Florence Group - to which today 38 laboratories with almost five thousand employees spread over nine regions belong, collaborating with over 100 international brands and operating in ready-to-wear, leather goods, intermediate processing and footwear - has signed an agreement with Weturn, a French company that has developed the first European chain dedicated to closed-loop textile waste management.
The 100% cotton offcuts from the Florence Group's production lines will be collected, prepared and sorted for processing into new yarns and materials. The aim is also to reduce Scope 3 emissions (all indirect emissions related to the supply chain, which often account for 70-80% of the total carbon footprint of a textile product), as Weturn materials reduce CO2 emissions by 50% on average compared to conventional virgin materials.
From Inditex to H&M, agreements for more circular fashion
.The partnership is only the most recent in a promising sector, and not only for the environment: in 2022, for example, the Inditex group invested in Circ, a US company that has developed a technology to separate fibres from 'polycotton', a mix of polyester and cotton that is extremely widespread but difficult to recover, and which has also resulted in two Zara collections, Inditex's main brand, made from recovered lyocell and polyester.
The Dutch start-up Re&Up, developed by the Turkish textile giant Sanko Group, has just obtained a second investment of EUR 70 million (after the EUR 37 million investment in 2021) from Proparco, a financial institution owned by the French Development Agency, to build a new recycling site in Gaziantep, Turkey. It deals specifically with the recycling of nylon 6 and 6.6 from mixed fabrics Syntetica, a start-up based in Paris and founded by young entrepreneurs Marco Bertone and Louis Monsigny, which has just obtained EUR 4.2 million in funding from private funds and investors to start up an industrial recycling process by 2026.
Last March, H&M, together with Vargas Holding, launched Syre, a company that will produce recycled polyester from textile waste and to which it has already secured purchases of USD 600 million over seven years, a quantity that will cover almost all the Swedish group's needs for recycled polyester fibre (currently obtained from the recovery of Pet bottles): the aim is to open recovery and recycling plants in the next few years in the heart of the supply chain, in Europe, the United States and Asia.
