HALO-TEX demonstrates a novel, sustainable, and circular bioproduct manufacturing system based on the biorefinery of salt-tolerant plant biomass. Cellulose-based yarns and fabrics with improved recyclability, bio-based additives, and composites are targeted towards high-pressure textile and biochemical industries. It addresses the European Green Deal objectives, the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, and the EU strategies regarding bioeconomy and circular textiles, amongst other policies and initiatives. HALO-TEX goes beyond the state-of-the-art by using underexploited feedstock in an innovative extraction, pretreatment, and separation process cascade for maximum resource valorization, and sustainable cost-effective manufacturing of multiple products. Consumer acceptance studies and comprehensive product information systems will be developed to overcome the social barriers related to the uptake of bioproducts. The textile industry has a tremendous negative environmental impact regarding primary raw material, freshwater and land use, emissions and pollution, and waste generation. HALO-TEX addresses these issues by using novel, secondary feedstocks grown in marginal land, developing circular biorefinery system with low energy and chemical input, and enhancing the sorting and recycling of materials and bioproducts. It will provide an innovative value chain and a sustainable model for bioproduct manufacturing to advance transitions towards a circular bioeconomy, increase the uptake of novel products, and foster socio-economic opportunities, especially in rural, vulnerable regions. The partners are skilled experts within their respective fields, and the project builds on previous Horizon projects. Located across Europe, the consortium provides a broad perspective on the related research areas and target industries while ensuring that the results and project’s benefits are widespread, reaching consumers and stakeholders across the value chains and beyond sector borders.

Nowadays, only 20% of the whole plastic production is recycled due to barriers such as the presence of complex fractions in the waste streams including contaminants or multilayer materials or the mix of plastics with other types of waste that cannot be sorted in a feasible way. This situation implies a high environmental impact when plastic waste is landfilled or incinerated, so new solutions other than mechanical recycling must be developed to significantly increase the amount of plastics being valorized into new feedstocks. PLASTICE was conceived to solve this need by developing a set of new valorization processes that are aligned with the most relevant roadmaps of chemical recycling technologies at European level. Therefore, main efforts will be devoted to the design, development and demonstration under real conditions together with EU waste managers of four valorization technologies: (i) MW-assisted pyrolysis; (ii) hydrothermal liquefaction; (iii) Combined gasification and chemical post-treatment and (iv) Cascade enzymatic hydrolysis. Moreover, PLASTICE overall approach will deploy innovative elements along the whole value chain with the objective of integrating green technologies for the new processes to become sustainable and closing the loop to deliver circular value chains around plastics (including textiles with plastic content). Therefore, PLASTICE works both upstream and downstream the valorization processes, integrating new sorting systems, quality upgrading technologies, digitalization tools and eco-design principles together with new business models linked to each step of the circular value chains. Following this approach, PLASTICE will impact on the amount of landfilled plastics and GHG emissions linked to process operation and fossil fuels-based feedstock. Its replication will be supported by contributing to the development of new standards and regulations, and by creating a community of followers supported by PLASTICE tools and consortium.

TORNADO project aims to contribute to the transition to a safe circular economy by influencing how products should be designed, produced, used or treated at their end-of-life. New organic and hybrid free-toxic coatings with water and oil repellence following Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) criteria will be developed. The novel proposed coatings will be PFAS free. TORNADO idea is to research and develop 1) Two new type of functionalized acrylated biomonomers with PDMS and POSS by two different chemical routes (acrylation and direct acrylation). 2) To synthesized and formulate 2 new biobased coatings based on the functionalized biomonomers by two technologies, waterborne organic and hybrid coatings and hybrid sol-gel coatings. Biomonomers and coatings will be scale up in an industrial environment. Coatings will be applied by different industrial processes depending on the industrial field. The two coatings will be validated in industrially relevant environments to obtain a performance at least identical to PFAS coatings in terms of water and oil repellence and tested according to the main textile, packaging and kitchenware specifications and requirements (waterproofness, oxygen barrier and durability, respectively). The improvement in environmental performance and circularity of the new coatings will be assessed through environmental Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Cost, and social Life Cycle Analysis (LCA/LCC/s-LCA) of the proposed new coatings compared to traditionally used hazardous coatings. Computational tools will be developed for efficient interfacing with publicly accessible and accepted QSAR-models to facilitate ease-of-use in-silico prediction of required physiochemical properties, toxicological end-points and degradation.

The textile value chain comprises a multitude of materials, a wide variety of end users and challenging final applications. There is a shift towards a more sustainable textile value chain, but it is slow and needs more innovative technologies to combat challenges such as low recycling rates, substitution of substances of (very high) concern and chemical pollutants. The project Towards safe and sustainable biobased textile (BioSusTex) has the objective to demonstrate rapid development of several key technologies which will have a significant impact on the textile value chain, a need highlighted by key industrial partners within the consortium. Focusing on cotton and cellulosic textiles BioSusTex targets increased recycling rates and substitution of harmful compounds by (i) delivering an optimized cellulosic fiber recycling process for dope-dyed man-made cellulosics, (ii) develop efficient and sustainable pre-processing techniques for removal of elastane, dyes, and impurities from post-consumer blended cellulosic textile, while avoiding potential toxic degradation products during processing (iii) develop a biobased PFAS-free water-repellent coating based on an innovative methodology with temporary surfactants and (iv) developing removable biobased, PVC-free print formulations. Significant improvements in these key technologies, in accordance with the Safe and Sustainable-by-design (SSbD) framework, are expected to notably improve the sustainability of the textile value chain. Further, BioSusTex will not only yield technical solutions but respond to the industry needs of rapid assessments methods by (v) further developing analytical methods and prediction tools related to toxicity evaluation (vi) building a novel Decision Support software tool implementing the SSbD methodology; and (vii) creating a database compiling all the data generated in the previous stages, which ultimately supports systemic sustainable innovation in the textile value chain as a whole.