I + D / Nuevos materiales y sostenibilidad. Revalorización de residuos, no tejidos y composites

CIRCULAR INDUSTRY CV – CIRCULAR ECONOMY TO REVALORISE MULTI-COMPOSITE WASTE FROM THE FOOTWEAR, TOYS AND TEXTILE INDUSTRIES OF THE AUTONOMOUS REGION OF VALENCIA

Year: 2020

MOTIVATION

The recent European Directive 2018/851, amending the Framework Directive 2008/98/EC on waste, proposes that EU Member States not only take measures to minimise the production of waste through the development of clean technologies, but also to promote its recovery and revalorisation, as part of the proposed measures to promote the circular economy and the sustainable use of resources. The Directive also proposes to establish fees and restrictions on landfill and waste incineration operations to provide incentives for waste prevention and recycling.

For this reason, in recent years, the introduction of the concept of a circular economy has begun to be significant in industrial activities with a view to making efficient use of resources, selecting those with the least environmental impact, reducing the creation of waste while simultaneously promoting its reuse and/or recovery.

This is why concepts such as sustainability and the circular economy are gaining a presence in different industrial areas, including the textile, footwear and toy industries. It is clear that growing consumer-led pressure is having its effect on the practices adopted by the business community. This transformation from a linear to a circular economy in production methods is taking place at break-neck speed, especially in those sectors where interaction with the final consumer takes place directly, as is the case in the textile, footwear and toy sectors.

OBJECTIVES

The main objective of this initiative is the development of circular economy models for the revaluation of multi-component waste in the textile, footwear and toy industries. These models can be both intra and inter-sectorial, as represented by the collaborating Technological Centres: INESCOP, AITEX and AIJU. The three Institutes wanted to tackle the problems associated with multi-composition materials, as they do not currently have in place a technically and economically viable revaluation strategy.

Among the three industrial sectors in the proposal, there are materials with similar chemical compositions. For example, thermoplastic materials are used to a greater or lesser extent in all three sectors, while polyurethane based materials, of different chemical nature, are also used by manufacturers of shoes, textiles and toys. Elastomeric materials in various formats are found in standard solutions in the footwear and toy sectors. These are just a few examples of waste materials which can be considered as raw materials in the same sector or in either of the other two considered in this initiative.

To a greater or lesser extent, the process of recovering materials of a multi-composition polymeric nature is being tackled using different technologies, in each of these industrial sectors. However, the revaluation or upcycling of multi-composition waste is a problem yet to be solved, and this part is destined for energy recovery, or goes to landfill.

To this end, a standard demonstrator will be developed to address the main challenge posed by multi-format, multi-composition materials: how to classify, transform and implement the raw materials derived from the processing of these wastes.

The ultimate aim of the CIRCULAR INDUSTRY-CV initiative is to establish synergies between the footwear, textile and toy sectors in terms of applied circular economy, establishing new ways of revaluing multi-composition waste created by these industries.

EXPECTED RESULTS

The successful introduction of the CIRCULAR INDUSTRY-CV project is expected to produce results that will enable the establishment of a circular economy in the network of Valencian companies interested in adopting a sustainable economic development model. On the one hand, waste identified from the footwear, textile and toy sectors will be defined by origin, presentation formats, volumes and current management and classification systems. Research and development of a technology that allows the transformation and classification of these wastes into raw materials for the development of materials applied to the toy, textile and footwear sectors will also be carried out. The morphological properties of the resulting waste will also be defined to incorporate it into different technologies to develop highly sustainable materials and a study of their physical, mechanical and functional properties will help define the sector of application to carry out the transfer of companies from the different industrial sectors in Valencia. The results will contribute to the implementation of a circular economy, and industrial symbiosis.

This project is funded by the Conselleria d’Economia Sostenible, Sectors Productius, Comerç i Treball de la Generalitat Valenciana, through IVACE, and is co funded by ERDF from the European Commission within the framework of the Operational Programme FEDER for the Comunitat Valenciana 2014-2020.

In collaboration with:

GRANT NUMBER: IMIDEC/2019/19

AMOUNT: 201.109,19 € 

Additional Information

• Year: 2020

• Status: In Progress

• Entity: IVACE

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