Conference highlights pressures on sustainable textiles

Category: FIBRES

Country: Spain

Region: Europe

By Haydn Davis
25th October 2023

BARCELONA - Europe’s sustainable clothing and textile sector currently faces a number of critical challenges such as fragmented supply chains, regulatory ambiguity, and insufficient data tools, a conference has heard.

Delegates at the Ecosystex Conference, held in Barcelona last week, also heard that designers and product developers have limited knowledge of downstream impacts, and that their incentives often don’t align with sustainability goals. Moreover, regulators underestimate the complexities of their regulations, while consumers have not yet become significant drivers of sustainability in the industry.

The conference, organised by knowledge and research hub Ecosystex and Textile ETP, a Brussels-based network for textile and clothing research and innovation, brought together industry leaders, policymakers and researchers in a bid to bridge EU-funded textile research and sustainable textile practices.

Speakers at the event, which connected over 100 participants from 16 European countries, also stressed the need for technology development, standardisation and more public funding to “drive systemic transformation in the textile sector”.

The conference also included plenary sessions with European institution representatives providing updates on regulatory developments concerning the EU Textile Strategy. They also discussed their ongoing research efforts, focusing on eco-design and textile waste management concepts, and highlighted the availability of research and innovation funds specifically earmarked for the textile sector to bolster its transition towards sustainability.

“While sustainable textiles present a substantial market opportunity and potential for optimising operations in the global textile industry, the conference emphasised that many essential building blocks are currently missing,” organisers said. “Ecosystex seeks to make its contribution by better networking European researchers and technical industry experts with deep subject matter knowledge and resources to deploy to collaboratively generate the data, insights, methods and tools needed.”

Ecosystex currently operates four technical expert groups working on environmental impact assessment, textile recycling, eco-design, and renewable material standards.

It also offers a series of public webinars as part of its Ecosystex Insights Series, which serves as a platform for member projects to share ongoing developments.

Courtesy: Ecotextile.com