Managing the waste acrylic textiles

Recycling is a common word used more and more but is still not tackled appropriately in the EU, while landfill and incineration rates remain high. One of the major problems is to have secondary raw material that is as much as possible “equal” to the virgin one, because of contamination, treatments and deterioration that lower the product performance.

The REACT project addresses the management of waste acrylic textiles coming from outdoor awnings and furnishing. A crucial issue is an analysis and removal of finishing substances that affect the secondary raw material purity and their management. Then a mechanical recycling process will be implemented to obtain second life fibre and fabrics, which performance will be tested for the best application.
A full process to remove hazardous materials on finishing of waste acrylic textile will be investigated and developed, together with a safe utilisation and disposal of removed substances.

The final goal is to perform a new process for hazardous chemicals removal from finished acrylic textiles, with innovative investigation and processing techniques and to obtain a fully compatible recycled acrylic textile for reuse.

To maximise the impacts of the project results, recommendations for recycling process implementation, standards, design and technology transfer will be produced.

REACT in a nutshell

  • Programme: Horizon 2020
  • Call: H2020-SC5-2018-2019-2020
  • Topic: CE-SC5-01-2018
  • Type of action: Research and innovation action
  • Proposal number: 820869-2
  • Consortium: 7 partners for 4 EU countries
    • 3 Research centres
    • 2 Industrial companies
    • 2 SMEs