Objectives

• To provide better understanding and knowledge of the current export of used textile/textile waste from the EU;
• To provide suggestions/recommendations on how to improve the transparency and sustainability of such trade flows;
• To increase amounts of separately collected textile waste in line with the Waste Framework Directive’s obligation to separately collect textiles as of 2025.

Priorities

• Priority 1: To develop technical criteria to better distinguish textile waste from non-waste used textiles
  • at the stage of discarding textiles by their holder in order to facilitate a separate collection system that ensures as a priority separate collection for re-use and repurposing and secondly separate collection for preparation for re-use and recycling,
  • at the stage of sorting of collected textiles waste to facilitate re-use and repurposing,
  • at the stage of shipments, including exports of textiles;
• Priority 2: To facilitate the development and consolidation of separate collection and recycling capacities for a wide range of textile waste and the establishment of coordination framework in order to ensure crossborder synergies between textile recycling centres and benefit several Member States.

Among financed actions

• Running tests of technical feasibility of specific recycling technologies, and testing feasibility of organizational structures (business interactions between textile collectors, recyclers and users/marketers of recycled content fibres);
• Providing a detailed mapping of ongoing shipments of used textiles and textile waste from the EU and a detailed analysis of the impacts of such shipments on third countries (economic, social, environmental);
• Providing recommendations for the transferability of the pilot project, identifying main barriers and opportunities identified during the pilot project of setting up of sorting and recycling.

Additional information

• This call for proposals is an open call for proposals.
• Initial duration of the action: Maximum 36/48 months.

Eligibility 

• Be a legal entity (public or private);
• Be established in one of the eligible countries;
• The coordinator must be established in an EU Member State.

• Total budget of the call: 4.8 million euro
• Total budget of the topic: 1 million euro
• Amount of the grant: 1 million euro
• Co-financing rate: up to 90% of the total eligible costs