AGENDA

By 2025, all EU countries will be required to collect textiles separately — a major milestone for the circular transition. This keynote explores how the industry can seize this moment to build the necessary infrastructure, unlock investment, and create new value chains through innovation and policy alignment.

As the EU rolls out the most ambitious package of textile regulations in history, the industry must move from targets to implementation. This panel unpacks the practical realities of complying with new laws while simultaneously building a viable market for textile recycling.

• Lessons from France’s textile EPR model – what about the rest of Europe?
• How to finance collection and sorting at scale.
• Aligning definitions for recycled content and output quality.
• Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR): new design rules for durability, recyclability, and recycled content.

Recycling textiles is both a challenge and a growing opportunity. This session showcases advanced technologies alongside real industry projects, demonstrating how circular solutions are being scaled and integrated into value chains.

The fashion industry faces a defining challenge: moving sustainable solutions from ambition to large-scale implementation. Amidst bold sustainability targets, rapid technological innovation, and complex supply chains, a critical tension is emerging: How do we transition from isolated pilot initiatives to true, industry-wide transformation?

This panel explores how brands, technology providers, and ecosystem partners are collaborating to make circular solutions a tangible reality at scale.

• How brands can contribute and take responsibility: Exploring the key ways companies can support and drive the industry’s sustainability transition.
• Technologies and materials that drive transformation: Evaluating which material innovations, recycling processes, or bio-based technologies can genuinely contribute to long-term sustainability—and how their potential can be realistically assessed.
• Open gaps and missing building blocks: Identifying what is still needed in terms of infrastructure, financing, regulation, data flow, and organizational culture. What must be strengthened to make circularity truly mainstream?

Digitalisation and innovative recycling solutions are reshaping the textile value chain. From AI-driven sorting and fibre recognition to advanced chemical and mechanical recycling methods, this session explores how data, automation and new technologies can unlock higher-quality outputs, streamline operations, and support the transition to scalable circular systems.

Speed networking format will allow you to efficiently introduce yourself to a diverse array of professionals within a short span of time. Later you can follow up on the contacts and arrange further meetings to discuss business opportunities in more detail.

While EPR can create the framework for textile recycling, the real challenge lies in building a viable market. This discussion will dive into:

• Why collection and sorting remain the weakest link — and how digital product passports, AI sorting, and standardisation can help.
• How to make fibre-to-fibre projects bankable (lessons from plastics financing and brand off-take agreements).
• What brands and retailers need to commit to — beyond pilots — to ensure textile circularity does not stall at 1%.
• How Europe can avoid repeating the “solar industry” scenario, where innovation is created here but scaled in Asia.