The tExtended project will achieve its overall objective of reduction of textile waste by 80% by within industrial-urbal symbiosis developing and demonstrating effective textile recovery, waste valorisation and recycling processes combined with digital tools, sensing systems and data-driven solutions to support sustainable circularity of textiles. We will develop a knowledge-based Blueprint, i.e. a master plan for a sustainable textile ecosystem. The basis of the Blueprint is a Conceptual Framework which determines the optimized utilization of textile flows, aiming for retention of value of materials in a safe and sustainable way. Based on the Blueprint, we will implement a real scale demonstrator, verifying its replicability and potential to reduce textile waste. tExtended brings together a multidisciplinary group of experts with complementary skills needed for twin transition in sustainable textile sector. Different types of organizations, research, industry, and non-profit organizations such as NGOs and municipal waste management are included. The consortium consists of actors with different roles in the textile recycling ecosystem: waste management, recycling, textile materials and textile products manufacturing. Participation of forerunner companies and actors involved in textile recycling enables us also to spread best practises for textile recovery and recycling around Europe and across the sector.

Europe has an extensive textile waste problem - annually 7 –7.5 million tons of textile waste is generated, but only about 30 - 35 % of the generated waste is collected separately and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing. Collection of textile waste will become mandatory in EU member states by 2025. Most of the textile are cotton, polyester, or their blends. Considerable amounts of CO/PES blends are disposed every year due to the technical challenge and/or economic viability of recycling. The objective of PESCO-UP is to develop a sustainable and economically and technologically viable process of the mixed CO/PES textile waste to be upcycled into cotton originated and polyester products. The processes should enable for production of new products without quality restriction and of products with identical properties and performances as those produced using primary resources. The main tools to achieve this are the development of automated identification and sorting methods for textiles, Digital Product Passport with a marketplace-style dataspace for sharing data describing material streams to support matching of supply and demand of textile materials, and the process development of purification, separation technologies as well as the technologies that utilize the separated cotton and PES fractions for the valuable products. PESCO-UP will ensure that sustainable fiber-to-fiber recycling becomes a reality in Europe. This will turn a societal waste problem into a business opportunity for European SMEs and bring the textile industry back to Europe. At the same time dependency on oil and cotton based raw materials will decrease, which will mean reduction in CO2 emission and reduced water consumption. The use of developed digital methods and digital product passport can be widened in other industrial sectors to solve their recycling and sustainability issues.