GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

The purpose of this topic is to enable the optimal functioning of EPR schemes for textiles within the EU and to take into account the commitments of the textile strategy on EPR. 

Proposals should bring together different stakeholders active in the sector along the value chain, such as waste collectors, waste sorters, repair and reuse organisations. Proposals should analyse how EPR schemes can improve the circularity of textiles, assess the material composition in a wide range of used textile products and waste with a view to targeted EPR schemes for improved collection and recycling, and test separate collection options for reuse or end-of-life treatment that could be enforced through EPR schemes. They should also consider possible rebound effects and only propose measures that will not hamper the market uptake of more sustainable novel textile materials. Projects should also recommend/identify/define tools (policy, legislation, governance, market-based, etc.) that the EU institutions (Commission, Parliament, Council of the EU) could implement or propose in order to reduce the overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the textile sector.

Proposals will do so by providing recommendations on improving the ease of identification of material composition in a wide range of used textile products/waste to inform the different actors in the use and end-of-life stages of textiles (consumers for use and disposal, social enterprises to enable reuse, waste management operators to enable preliminary treatment and treatment operations). To do so, it will inter alia identify, develop and test innovative labelling of textile products (including through the use of technologies such as AI, blockchain or Internet of Things) to ease separate collection for re-use or end-of-life treatment that leads to high quality secondary raw materials.