European textile sector needs to move towards a more circular economy in order to reduce its impacts on the environment and society. Currently, many textiles materials contained in products are discarded as waste after-use, leading to the loss of valuable materials and resources.

RESYNTEX is a research project which aims to innovate recycling process for post consumer textile waste, through industrial symbiosis, transforming it into secondary raw materials.

Post-consumer non-wearable textile waste is sorted by material and undergoes a pre-treatment process. Cellulose, polyester and polyamide materials undergo a process of discolouration, biochemical depolymerisation to be respectively transformed into glucose, ethylene glycol, terephathalic acid and polyamide oligomers. Protein based materials, including wool undergo a chemical degradation which transform theme into Amino acids and peptides. During this process all water is recycled. The outcome products are: ethanol can be produced from cellulose-based materials. PET resin are produced from the depolymerised PET and value-added chemicals are produced from polyamide oligomers.

Post-consumer non-wearable textile waste are transformed into value added chemicals. RESYNTEX focuses on:

- Designing a complete value chain from textile waste collection through to the generation of new feedstock for chemicals and textiles

- Improving collection approaches while increasing public awareness of textile waste and social involvement

- Enabling traceability of waste using data aggregation. The collected data will evaluate the performance of the new value chains by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC)

- Developing innovative business models for the chemical and textile industries

- Demonstrating a complete reprocessing line for basic textile components, including liquid and solid waste treatment

RESYNTEX is a research project which aims to create a new circular economy concept for the textile and chemical industries. Using industrial symbiosis, it aims to produce secondary raw materials from unwearable textile waste.

RESYNTEX has project partners from across 10 different EU member states. Partners include industrial associations, businesses, SMEs and research institutes. Working together, the group creates an effective model for the whole value chain.