RESERVIST aims to establish ‘reservist cells’ that in times of crises can be activated within 48hrs to switch to manufacturing medical products and services that are spiking in demand. Such a ‘reservist cell’ will consist of (i) a backbone network of core companies for manufacturing and testing; (ii) an extended network for further capacities (eg local provision, packaging, distribution, customization,…); (iii) a digital coordination platform and (iv) a pool of experts from the companies of the network. These cells will become operational in case of an emergency/pandemic but to make economic sense, the same approach of rapid flexibility and adaptability will be used to deal with surging demand in ‘normal circumstances’. To realise this concept, we will first work on three levels individually: network level, connected manufacturing/digital manufacturing level and technical level, the latter referring to tweaking manufacturing lines, developing required materials and establishing links with testing/certification. Next, we will demonstrate the repurposing of 5 existing manufacturing lines within 48hrs towards manufacturing of ‘textile PPE’ (surgical and respiratory face masks, medical aprons) and ‘respiratory ventilators’ (invasive and non invasive) that comply with necessary testing and certification and proceed with the embedment of the reservist cells at the partners in the network. We will develop blueprints for further take-up and replication of the concept to other sectors. Within the project we will develop two replication demos: ‘disinfection equipment’ and ‘emergency medical equipement’. To support the Cells we will tap into the worldwide maker community and into relevant OITBs and networks. The consortium is strongly industry-driven, including 4 LE and 7 SMEs coming from 7 EU countries. To maximise impact, we will extend our partner network and our Impact Support Group (18 Support Letters provided at proposal stage).

CISUTAC will tackle current bottlenecks in the transition to circular textiles and clothing. For scale and significance, we focus on polyester, cotton & cellulosic fibres (together ca. 90% of textile materials) and products from 3 sub-sectors: garments, active goods and workwear. In this way, we will have a representative view on the challenges the textile sector is facing for circular transition. CISUTAC follows a holistic approach covering the technical, sectoral and socio-economic levels. We will provide systemic innovations at these levels and perform 3 pilots to demonstrate their feasibility and value: (i) Repair and disassembly; (ii) Sorting for reuse and recycling; (iii) Circular garments through fibre to fibre recycling and design for circularity. To realise these pilots, we will develop semi-automated workstations, analyse infrastructure and material flow, digitally enhance sorting operations and setup interventions with consumers. After the piloting phase, attention will be on the uptake of the results, by the sector, by the wider stakeholder group as well by the consumers. With (worldwide) leading brands and companies, CSOs, RTOs and EU associations, CISUTAC is truly EU-wide and covers the full novel circular value chain. Through the consortium, and further supported by the Transition Support Group with zz members, CISUTAC is strongly linked to ongoing initiatives allowing synergies and joint activities. This is essential for our implementation but also for leveraging the impact and enabling the shift towards a sustainable EU textiles & clothing, underpinned by circular material flows and supported by the wider stakeholders. CISUTAC will bring significant impact of scale via its innovations on repair, dismantling, sorting and fibre-to-fibre recycling. Realising this impact will lead to a reduction of ca. 975ktonCO2eq yearly and to new business activities and markets that together have a value of ca. €250mio and lead to ca. 1300 FTE, also social economy.

Europe has an extensive textile waste problem - annually 7 –7.5 million tons of textile waste is generated, but only about 30 - 35 % of the generated waste is collected separately and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing. Collection of textile waste will become mandatory in EU member states by 2025. Most of the textile are cotton, polyester, or their blends. Considerable amounts of CO/PES blends are disposed every year due to the technical challenge and/or economic viability of recycling. The objective of PESCO-UP is to develop a sustainable and economically and technologically viable process of the mixed CO/PES textile waste to be upcycled into cotton originated and polyester products. The processes should enable for production of new products without quality restriction and of products with identical properties and performances as those produced using primary resources. The main tools to achieve this are the development of automated identification and sorting methods for textiles, Digital Product Passport with a marketplace-style dataspace for sharing data describing material streams to support matching of supply and demand of textile materials, and the process development of purification, separation technologies as well as the technologies that utilize the separated cotton and PES fractions for the valuable products. PESCO-UP will ensure that sustainable fiber-to-fiber recycling becomes a reality in Europe. This will turn a societal waste problem into a business opportunity for European SMEs and bring the textile industry back to Europe. At the same time dependency on oil and cotton based raw materials will decrease, which will mean reduction in CO2 emission and reduced water consumption. The use of developed digital methods and digital product passport can be widened in other industrial sectors to solve their recycling and sustainability issues.

smartX will match smart textiles technology with end market demand by filling the current industrial manufacturing gap. To realise this, smartX will establish a novel industrial value chain composed of SMEs and start-ups from textiles, designers, (micro)electronics, data processing, IoT, manufacturing technology, distributors, funding providers and end users. The smartX core is funding a portfolio of at least 40 Trailblazer projects, which will pioneer one or more stages of the novel smart textiles value chain. Independent external experts will select these small cross-sectorial, cross-cultural and cross-regional innovation actions that will be co-funded by smartX via an open call system. The projects will be supported from start to end via the smartX Coaching Approach covering all relevant multidisciplinary aspects and delivered by specially trained cluster managers. We will focus on protective wear, industrial applications and healthcare & wellbeing end markets. Trailblazer project formation will be supported by an open collaboration platform (target > 150 company members) that will support smart textiles value chain building. The platform will be maintained and extended beyond smartX. We will build on the successful WORTH project for implementing small funding schemes. We will apply the award-winning Innovation Potential Audit and will link with REGIOTEX, a thematic partnership of 15 regions under the S3 Platform on Industrial Modernisation to leverage follow up funding. smartX unites 8 clusters (accessing over 60.000 SMEs across Europe), 2 RTOs (for technological assistance) and 3 innovation support entities. The wearables market is estimated at ca €150 billion (2026). Assuming smart textiles will take 10%, the new value chain targeted by smartX represents in Europe ca €5.5 billion or ca 22.000 jobs. US and Asia are setting up significant public and private investments, so European action is needed not to miss this value and job creating opportunity.

In EU a garment is worn an average of 3 times in its life, with €400 Bln lost a year discarding clothes which can still be worn and 92 Mln tons of waste, 87% of clothes ending up in landfills. But due to growing awareness on ethical and environmental impacts, 66% of consumers are ready to pay more for sustainable products . TRICK will provide a complete, SME affordable and standardised platform to support the adoption of sustainable and circular approaches: it will enable enterprises to collect product data and to access to the necessary services on a dedicated marketplace, open to third party solutions. TRICK demo will be run in 2 highly complex and polluting domains: textile-clothing as main pilot and perishable food for replication. EC estimates that up to 10% of the 88 million tons of food waste generated annually in the EU are linked to date marking, with associated costs estimated at €143 billion. Secured traceability will rely on the data needed for the preferential certification of origin (PCO), used for duty calculation. It will be certified by Customs as member of the consortium, representing anti fraud public forces. The data extracted by the fiscal documents for the PCO will be integrated with the bill of materials, saved in the Blockchains (BC) per each lot of production to grant traceability continuity, and with the additional ones to enable the six services provided by TRICK: traceability, circular assessment, PEF, health and social assessment, A.I. for anti counterfeting. BC will secure information through the whole process, ending to consumers for informed purchasing. Data confidentiality and privacy will be granted by the exploitation of Blockchains smart contracts while the adoption of different technologies will be solved by the development of Blockchain interoperability connectors between the two BC providers. End users will cover the whole TC value chain, from raw materials to recycling.