REACT partners Para’, Martel, CETI, Ghent University, Soft Chemicals, Jak Spinning met at Centrocot in Busto Arsizio (Italy) for the kick off meeting of the project. The acrylic fibre (almost 2 million tonnes in 2014) are used to produce apparels, outdoor furniture, awnings, carpets, boats covers etc.

The global acrylic market is projected to reach a market value of about 5,000 million by 2026. All the solution dyed acrylics that come on the market in EU (fibre to be woven, textiles to be finished and final goods) generates huge amount of waste. REACT ambition is to search for an ecological and economical way to treat and reuse these waste within Europe, allowing European fabric producers to be more self-sustainable and create a virtuous circular economy process in the vertical sector. We are at work to develop a method to remove 90-95% of chemical undesirable substances from waste of acrylic fabrics with an environment friendly process, to improve sustainability, to reduce environmental and health risk, to enhance recycling opportunities. We aim at obtaining a final textile product with yarn coming from 100% recycled fire, mixing regenerated fibres from card, winding opened thread and waste collected fibre, each up to 33%. Last but not least to re-use the acrylic textiles as raw material for other production cycles, to reach 30% of waste prevented from disposal (3.600 tonnes) for the outdoor sector (awnings and furnishing).