
Circular economy and sustainability
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY MODELS APPLIED TO TEXTILE WASTE OF AGRICULTURAL ORIGIN
AGROLOOP
Motivation
The continuous growth of the world population has led to the transformation of more and more land for the agricultural sector. Due to this reason, the agricultural sector has gone from being a traditionally family sector to being almost completely industrialized, with the continuous generation of waste that this fact entails.
Spain has Europe’s largest area of land given over to agriculture, with 71,783 hectares. Although the sector is highly technical, to date and due to the lack of knowledge in the area, recycling and revaluating its waste is unfeasible.


Objectives
- Identification of textile waste generated by the agricultural industry.
- Characterisation of the waste, to evaluate possible decontamination processes.
- Carrying out recycling tests on a semi-industrial scale.
- Study and characterisation of the products obtained after the recycling process.
- Introduction of the recycled materials in processes appropriate to their characteristics.
- Prototyping of proofs of concept based on the materials obtained.
- Analysis of the technical and economic viability of the possible applications developed.
- Identification of stakeholders such as textile-based clusters, associations and companies, to establish a circular economy model for the industry.
Expected results

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Gain knowledge regarding the identification of the amount of textile waste generated derived from the agricultural industry, as well as the processes of its recycling and revaluation.
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Recycling of textile waste used in the agricultural sector and its subsequent revaluation.
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Determination of viable methods for each of the analyzed textile residues.
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Concept tests to demonstrate the viability of the processed materials.


Grant number: IMAMCA/2022/6
Programme: Plan of non-economic activities 2022
Period of execution: January 2022 – December 2022
Status: Finished
More information: PLAN OF ACTION
Entity: IVACE

This project is funded by the Conselleria d’Economia Sostenible, Sectors Productius, Comerç i Treball de la Generalitat Valenciana, through IVACE.

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NEWS
AITEX was present at the CITEVE iTechStyle Summit presenting the European project r-LightBioCom of which the center is the main coordinator.
Coordinated by the Spanish AITEX, the project promotes a paradigm shift from current linear to circular value chains for advanced, bio-based lightweight high-performance composites with significantly improved environmental performance.
AITEX works in research lines financed by IVACE that provide high-value solutions and tools to make companies more competitive.