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 is navigating a period of rapid change as consumption patterns evolve and circularity requirements increase. This session explores the practical solutions needed to align retail business models with recycling capabilities.

• Shifting away from problematic blends to mono-materials that align with mechanical and chemical recycling specifications.
• Determining the most economically and environmentally viable end-of-life path for different product tiers.
• Operational strategies to reduce non-recyclable components (trims, dyes, prints) entering the recycling stream.
• The impact of regulation on fast fashion, online marketplaces and circularity model

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.