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RE.ACT: Make circular economy a reality in textile

18.12.20
Projects
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Marzoli took part to the RE.ACT project developed by The Egyptian Cotton project of UNIDO, sharing its technology to support the adoption of circular solutions for denim recycling in the Egyptian cotton textile industry.

Textile supply chains are moving towards new directions, where sustainability, circularity and competitiveness are directly linked to joining forces through strategic partnerships along the value chain to share innovation, inspiration, and forward solutions beyond their “business as usual”.

In such context, The Egyptian Cotton project of UNIDO rolled out a denim recycling pilot, “RE.ACT” to test market opportunities and technology capacities for transitioning into circular economy models.

Through activating a multi-stakeholder partnership between Egypt and Italy, we teamed up and shared knowledge, expertise, and technology to show the possibility of making recycling profitable through trialling post-industrial denim waste transformation into NE 30/1 cotton yarns to create high-value knitwear and fabrics while adopting on-the-rise circularity practices.
The finished fabrics produced a promising quality knitwear capsule collection through an educational ‘Knitwear Design for Sustainability’ workshop delivered by Italian fashion designer Marina Spadafora to Egyptian and Italian Fashion design students.

With the support of Circle Economy expertise, a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a business case have been conducted, in order to prove reduction of environmental impacts of denim recycling and economic benefit for industry stakeholder.
The comparison with virgin cotton showed positive results for all the considered categories: water consumption, total energy demand and global warming potential.

Moreover, the economic assessment sheds light on the attractive opportunity that bringing a recycled cotton yarn value chain to life at scale in Egypt may present for industry stakeholders and on the rising opportunities for the Egyptian textile industry and market.

The Italian and Egyptian partners who, with Marzoli, contributed to the realization of this project are:

  • UNIDO and "The Egyptian Cotton project"
  • T&C: Supply of post-industrial denim fabrics
  • Filmar: Spinning process
  • Albini Group: Weaving and finishing
  • Marina Spadafora and Egyptian and Italian designers: Design and realization of the capsule collection
  • Circle Economy: Conduction of LCA and business case

 

In Marzoli we are focused on continuous innovation in mechanical regeneration of fibers and the RE.ACT project represents a further step in the development and design of high value recycling solutions.

“Developing and adopting green technologies means for us at Marzoli to carefully balance economic with environmental sustainability.  Circularity of fibers, thanks to fabrics regeneration, is creating a synergetic value chain among all the stakeholders. The new paradigm of a circular fiber supply chain will accelerate learning and development of know-how for all participating stakeholders pushing innovation and opening up to new potentials.” Points out Cristian Locatelli, General manager of Marzoli.

To know more about RE.ACT project and to read the full report click here