T-REX Project has concluded
After three years of collaboration, innovation, and shared ambition, the T-REX Project has officially concluded.
Circularity is no longer an edge case for fashion, it’s a vital system reset that the industry, and the wider world, is just beginning to navigate. In 2020 alone, Europeans generated almost seven million tonnes of textile waste, according to the European Environment Agency, a statistic that has spurred legislators into action. To explore solutions, the EU funded a consortium of 13 leading stakeholders across fashion supply chains to form the Textile Recycling Excellence (T-REX) Project. Its ambition was to develop a holistic framework for scaling textile-to-textile (T-2-T) recycling by identifying critical opportunities within infrastructure, technology, policy and citizen engagement.
Launched in June 2022, the T-REX Project ran for three years. In 2022, Textile Exchange reported that less than one percent of the global fibre basket was made up of pre- and post-consumer textile waste, a figure that has remained stagnant in subsequent reports. Set within this context, the project’s remit was to not only identify the challenges and barriers preventing circularity of textiles, but to make clear the business case for industry-wide investment and adoption of circular practices and systems. To generate the desired paradigm shift, the project has developed the T-REX Blueprint for wide-scale adoption — a suite of resources that include reports, a white paper, and a technical guidance.
The T-REX Blueprint distills three years of learnings into recommendations for seven areas of scaling T-2-T chemical recycling in Europe. Bolstering the blueprint is a range of supporting resources that explore each phase in more detail, through case studies, guidelines, and pilot programmes completed during the project.
Yarn Spinning
EU spinning infrastructure can only support a small fraction of recycled textile waste, with the vast majority of spinning capacity in Asia. In line with the inherently global nature of fashion’s supply chains, the T-REX Project recommends the adoption of suitable end-of-waste criteria in the EU, which would allow for the processing of feedstock in other regions, freeing up investment for more localised collection, sorting, and pre-processing.
Garment Creation
Circularity starts with design. The T-REX Project has produced a technical guidance for circular design which aims to empower designers and material developers with the right knowledge to create products that align with current and future textile recycling standards. As part of this, the T-REX Project recommends an industry standard for the labelling of fibres on garment tags, and the development of realistic, achievable recycled content targets by policymakers.
Use of Garment
Citizen participation is central to the success of the circular economy, so it’s important to build societal awareness and involvement in clothing resale, repair, rental, and swapping, as well as how to responsibly dispose of a garment at the end of its life. To support this, the T-REX Project’s Citizen Engagement white paper is a practical guide to engaging individuals and communities through tried-and-tested activities piloted across Europe. Organisations looking to get involved can read case studies on T-REX Project-led repair workshops, social media campaigns, and creative projects.
Collection
Infrastructure to divert textile waste away from undesirable end of life outcomes like landfills and incinerators remains fragmented. Harmonised policy will be necessary to underpin a new circular system that can efficiently collect and process textile waste within the EU. The T-REX Project recommends integrating existing collection systems, often managed by charities, into regional and national programmes across EU member states for widespread impact. Implementing disincentives like landfill bans and disposal fees will also drive business participation, while citizen awareness campaigns support action at an individual-level.
Sorting
The sorting of textiles into circularity streams for reuse, recycling and resale is a predominantly manual process, making it time-consuming, expensive and difficult to scale. To overcome this bottleneck and remove barriers to scale, greater investment from both public and private sectors into automated sorting technologies will be necessary. The T-REX Project recommends a standardised approach to feedstock specification, sorting protocols, and data systems for common materials to allow for interoperability and compatibility between sorters and recyclers. Further research and development funding will also be critical to improve technology that can bolster efficiency of sorting and unlock new opportunities for circularity.
Preprocessing
To prepare end of life textiles for chemical recycling, mechanical and chemical preprocessing is a crucial stage of the value chain. In Europe, infrastructure remains limited, despite the fact that preprocessing has a direct impact on recyclability and quality of the final product. To optimise and increase the purity, yields, and consistency of feedstocks, the T-REX Project recommends further investment and research into pre-processing solutions, such as co-locating mechanical steps into sorting facilities and integrating chemical steps into recycling infrastructure.
Chemical Recycling
Chemical recycling will be vital to unlocking the circularity of textiles for fashion, but further research, targeted incentives, and analysis is needed to enable its full potential. The T-REX Project identifies key areas for this, including feedstock analysis to control contaminants and fibre properties, recyclability thresholds for materials like coatings and finishings, and development of the recycled textile’s capacity to be recycled in future.
The insights derived from the T-REX Project have been formalised as practical guides for the fashion industry to adopt and scale textile-to-textile recycling. Resources for specific sectors have been created in four core areas:
Data Collection
The collection, analysis, and application of data will be vital to scaling and optimising circularity in textile value chains. Systems must be interoperable, standardised, and collaborative to ensure data is easily processed and used. In November 2023, the T-REX Project released the Connecting Threads white paper to evaluate digital solutions and share nine themes and findings on needs, gaps and opportunities for involved stakeholders. In May 2025, the project published a follow up report on data models for T-2-T recycling. It analysed findings from a pilot project that addressed the original report’s key themes, including transparency, trust, infrastructure, capacity building, and more.
Industry Resources:
Lifecycle Assessment (LCA)
Quantifying impact reduction of circularity solutions is needed to increase adoption in line with the industry’s sustainability targets. As part of the T-REX Project’s outcomes, demonstrator products were produced through the successful implementation of recycling processes for polyester, polyamide 6, and cellulosic materials in Europe. To ensure impact reduction across key metrics like carbon, water, land and energy footprints, T-REX conducted an LCA to guide its development and improvement. Performed in alignment with ISO standards, this LCA examines and quantifies the recyclability and durability of chemically recycled fibres.
Industry Resource:
Legislation
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is a key component of the EU’s transition towards a circular economy. In November 2024, the T-REX Project hosted a policy roundtable to convene key stakeholders, including EU policymakers, to address challenges and opportunities with ESPR. The resulting white paper outlines and synthesises key recommendations from the roundtable, including the need for standardisation, scalable technologies, and industry alignment with policies on end-of-waste criteria and targets for recycled content.
Industry Resource:
Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA)
Building a business case for the viability and feasibility of the circular economy in Europe requires a concerted collaboration of all stakeholders in the textile recycling value chain. The T-REX Project’s TEA and the resulting report outline not only the clear industry need for T-2-T recycling, but the barriers to scale. These include the limited access to quality feedstock and the lack of scaled infrastructure. The following report identifies opportunities and actionable strategies for the fashion industry to overcome these challenges.
Industry Resource:
The fashion and textiles industry faces significant challenges in its transition from a linear to a circular economy, but the solutions exist to navigate this journey successfully. Through the T-REX Project’s comprehensive Blueprint and accompanying library of in-depth resources, the industry has the tools it needs to scale T-2-T recycling alongside broader circularity channels like reuse, repair and resale. The successful completion of the T-REX Project and the participation of leading businesses demonstrates the industry’s appetite and capacity for change.
