At Expoprotection Paris, to be held from November 6-8, 2018, wear2wear will establish closed-loop textile recycling across national European boundaries and economies: through intermediary Sympatex. The European textile partnership will in future collaborate with an association comprising the French government, industry and agencies on the “Green Deal”. Specifically, the parties will develop far-reaching synergies between wear2wear and FRIVEP (Filière pour le Réemploi et Recyclage des Vêtements Professionnels) in order to bring used polyester fabric back into circulation in a way that ensures value retention.
During the initial 15-month pilot phase, the French mail service, the French rail company (SNCF), the City of Paris and the national police, will collect more than 20 tonne of clothing. The aim is to reuse most of the textile raw materials in the functional clothing sector.
The findings from this will also be fed back into new tender specifications to facilitate the recycling process, aiming for a homogenous material composition wherever possible in future, starting as early as the clothing design stage. As a number of successful government projects in the past have shown, combining materials with the recyclable, PFC-free and PTFE-free Sympatex membrane made of pure polyether/ester allows the upcycled polyester fabric to subsequently be laminated again, thereby producing single-variety functional textiles that in turn are recyclable.
