Fashion for Good has launched a major initiative aimed at solving one of the fashion industry’s most persistent challenges: turning post-consumer textile waste into high-quality recycled feedstock at an industrial scale across Europe.
The project, named Project Feedstock Activation Europe (FAE), seeks to build the missing infrastructure required to enable large-scale textile-to-textile (T2T) recycling. It focuses on developing systems that can efficiently sort, clean and pre-process discarded garments that are currently unsuitable for reuse, converting them into usable raw material for recyclers.
The initiative comes as Europe faces mounting pressure to address textile waste under tightening circular economy regulations and extended producer responsibility schemes. While recycling technologies have advanced rapidly in recent years, industry stakeholders have repeatedly pointed out that the lack of consistent, high-quality input material remains a key bottleneck preventing industrial scaling.
According to Fashion for Good, Project FAE is designed to close this gap by focusing not on recycling innovation itself, but on the upstream systems that feed it.
At the core of the initiative is the challenge of post-consumer textile waste, which is often a complex mix of fibres, dyes, trims and contaminants. Much of this material cannot be reused directly and requires intensive sorting and preparation before it can enter chemical or mechanical recycling streams.
Project FAE will evaluate advanced pre-processing methods, including fibre blend separation, elastane removal and contaminant extraction, to determine which technologies are ready for industrial deployment and which still require further development.
The goal is to identify scalable solutions that can reduce costs while improving the quality and consistency of recycled feedstock supplied to downstream processors.
A second pillar of the project focuses on designing a network of regional “feedstock hubs” across Europe. These hubs would act as centralized facilities where post-consumer textiles are collected, automatically sorted and pre-processed into standardized material streams tailored to recycler requirements.
By combining automation with regional consolidation, the model aims to reduce logistics inefficiencies and improve supply reliability for recycling operators.
The initiative brings together a broad coalition of stakeholders spanning sorting companies, technology developers, recyclers and system enablers.
Sorting and pre-processing partners include Boer Group, Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, Erdotex, Formació i Treball, Humana People to People, Kringwinkel Antwerpen, New Retex, Nouvelles Fibres Textiles, Plaxtil-Essaimons, Sympany, Texaid and Texlimca.
On the recycling side, participating companies include Circ, Circulose, CuRe Technology, eeden, Infinited Fiber Company, Kipas (fibR-e), Matterr, Meltem Kimya, Recover, Reju, OnceMore from Södra and Worn Again Technologies, each working on different chemical and mechanical recycling pathways.
The project is also supported by ecosystem organisations such as Invest-NL, Landbell Group, Refashion, Reverse Resources, TEXroad, Wargon Innovation, WRAP, ZDHC Foundation and the Global Fashion Agenda.
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Unlike pilot programmes focused solely on technology validation, Project FAE is explicitly designed to create a commercially viable system for scaling textile circularity. That includes aligning operational standards across sorting facilities, improving feedstock specifications for recyclers, and testing economic models for regional infrastructure deployment.
The initiative reflects a broader shift in the industry: recognition that technological readiness alone is no longer the main barrier to circular fashion. Instead, the challenge lies in building coordinated supply chains capable of delivering consistent volumes of recyclable material.
Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good, said the industry has long underestimated the importance of upstream logistics in enabling recycling at scale.
“We have been talking about textile circularity for years, and the honest truth is that the technology is no longer the bottleneck,” Ley said. “What is holding us back is much more unglamorous: the sorting lines, the pre-processing steps, the supply systems that need to exist before a single fibre can be recycled.”
“Project FAE is our attempt to tackle that unglamorous, necessary work head-on – together with the brands, sorters and recyclers who know this problem better than anyone. If we get this right, we unlock something the industry has been trying to reach for a long time.”
The initiative comes as the European Union intensifies efforts to reduce textile waste and increase recycling rates under its circular economy strategy. Millions of tonnes of textiles are discarded annually across Europe, with a significant share ending up in landfill or incineration despite growing collection systems.
Industry experts say scaling T2T recycling could significantly reduce environmental pressure from virgin fibre production, particularly in cotton and polyester supply chains, which are both resource- and energy-intensive.
However, fragmentation in collection systems, inconsistent sorting standards and contamination issues have slowed progress toward industrial-scale adoption.
Project FAE aims to address these structural challenges by establishing repeatable systems that can be replicated across multiple European regions.
