E-textile is rapidly developing segment of electronics with an estimated growth from 2.3 billion USD in 2021 to 6.6 billion in 2026. They facilitate many socially important applications such as personalized health or elderly care or smart agriculture and production. Unfortunately, today, e-textiles are highly problematic in terms of environmental impact. Problems range from toxic materials used for production, through energy/water requirements to the difficulty end-of-life processing systems that combine traditional electronics and textile components. The aim of this project is to develop circuit technologies for e-textiles that are based on materials that minimize environmental impact, are compatible with the life-cycle of normal textiles to facilitate easy re-use in the spirit of circular economy and can be produced (and recycled) in an energy efficient way. The main breakthroughs with respect to the current state of technology will be in three areas: (1) A combination of digital inkjet, 3D printing and atmospheric plasma to produce sustainable textile electronics building blocks from environmentally friendly materials (e.g conducting polymers such as PEDOT:PSS and carbon based polymer nanocomposites). (2) Going beyond embedding electronics in textile structures on substrate and layer levels as is state of the art today, and using fibrous materials (enriched with electronic properties as stipulated above) as such to create electronic components such as transistors, capacitors etc. and combine them into more complex circuits. (3) Comprehensive, lifecycle-oriented model of the environmental impact of such e-textile technologies and their applications. Overall STELECT will create the foundations for a new paradigm for e-textiles development that is not just environment friendly and sustainable but also fundamentally changes the way e-textiles and wearable systems are designed and built facilitating whole new application domains and associated markets.

A bio-based system covers all sectors that rely on biological resources (animals, plants, micro-organisms and derived biomass, organic waste), processes, and principles.The development of a bio-based economy has been emphasized in EU Green Deal to decrease dependency on non-renewable energy and material resources, maintain food security, and decarbonize the economy.However, considering limited land and biological resources in the EU,sustainable and just development of industrial bio-based systems calls for special attention to material circularity, carbon emission, & iLUC risks of bio-based systems, as well as social objectives. BioRadar takes a system perspective to fill the indicator gap in material circularity, environmental impacts, and social impacts of industrial bio-based systems and develop digital monitoring tools for policy-makers and investors. BioRadar identifies circularity opportunities in industrial bio-based systems through biological and technical loops.Material Circularity Indicators(MCIs) are required to assess how well a bio-based system performs in the context of a circular economy.MCIs will help to incorporate circularity as design criteria in developing new bio-based systems, from material choice to new business models.Such indicators will also allow policy-makers to investigate the transition of bio-based systems from linear to circular. Environmental impact assessment of industrial bio-based systems calls special attention to energy use, water consumption, carbon emission, and land use indicators.For this, BioRadar aims to develop frameworks and metrics to evaluate carbon emission and assess the carbon capture and utilization potential, develop methods to evaluate iLUC risks of bio-based systems, and explore climate change mitigation and adoption opportunities for the whole supply chain of industrial bio-based systems. Further,BioRadar aims to identify social development objectives, formulate action plans for social impact assessment.