Waste2Fashion aims to foster sustainable and equitable growth throughout the Mediterranean by developing a comprehensive and scalable approach to reducing and reusing post-consumer textile waste. The project will accelerate the shift toward a circular and resource-efficient textile economy by embedding three complementary sustainability pillars into the region’s textile value chain:

1. designing products to minimise waste and enable easy disassembly,
2. improving systems for the collection and sorting of used textiles, and
3. advancing recycling and upcycling processes.
   Through these interventions, the project will showcase the technical, economic, social, and environmental advantages of circular practices.

Worldwide, more than 100 billion garments are sold annually, and production has doubled in just ten years. Yet, less than 1% of discarded textiles re-enter the fashion industry as recycled material, while the vast majority is incinerated or sent to landfill.

Against this global backdrop, the five participating territories currently lack the infrastructure, practices, and systems necessary to respond effectively to the environmental consequences of a predominantly linear fashion model. Waste2Fashion steps in to support the transition toward drastically reducing -and ultimately eliminating-  final waste disposal, in line with the “polluter pays” principle (for EU Member States) and broader waste-hierarchy principles. The project also positions participating regions ahead of forthcoming EU legislation on textile waste management and recycling.

Waste2Fashion will deliver two pilots in Beirut, Cairo, Catalonia, Monastir and Tuscany to 1) collect, re-use and recycle and 2) to prevent and revalorise post-consumer textile waste.

The waste management and treatment pilot (WP3) will help each territory to address the challenges of end-of-life textile recycling and will be comprised of 4 pillars:

1. Local disposal and recollection infrastructure.
2. Technology transfer of small-scale units to process garments into recyclable materials.
3. Development of market infrastructures for the new treated materials.
4. Technical and financial assistance for local commercial exploitation.

MedWaves’s role: 

As Lead Partner MedWaves will have an active role all across the different work packages. MedWaves will coordinate the action (WP1 -Coordination- & WP2 -Communication-), support the development of circular economy business models (WP4), and harness regional governance mechanisms to facilitate policy uptake (WP5).

Regarding communication, MedWaves, in coordination with partners, will design a tailored Communication and Dissemination Plan (CDP) to amplify results and ensure optimal project impact. The primary focus is to widely spread project activities and outcomes among appropriate target communities. The CDP will ensure that project knowledge is accessible to stakeholders, excellence elements are reusable and replicable, and societal benefits are highlighted through awareness-raising and story-based communications. Target groups are clustered with three filters: 1) Impact on everyday lives, 2) Better use of results by the innovation community, and 3) Spill-over to policymakers and industry.