Shaping Transformation Sustainably and Resiliently: Resilient Solutions for a Future-Ready Textile Industry
In the European Union, more than two billion tons of waste are generated each year, including a significant amount from textiles and clothing. Driven by numerous new EU regulations, the textile and apparel industry is expected to undergo a fundamental transformation by 2030.
To meet EU regulations, the traditional linear economic model must be transformed into a resource-efficient circular economy, aiming to make products durable and to use waste as raw material for new products. Managing such a transformation is complex, and the textile industry therefore faces major challenges.
RETRAKT investigates how textile and apparel manufacturers can redesign their processes to be resource-efficient, circular, and recycling-friendly—even under uncertain conditions. The interdisciplinary approach of “Resilience Engineering” serves as research framework. The developed instruments and methods will be tested in two practical case studies. A digital collaboration platform is intended to provide technical support for implementing these solutions across the industry.
2.3 Bill.
tons of waste generated worldwide per year
120 M
tons of textile waste generated worldwide per year
12.6 M
tons of textile waste in the EU per year
355 kg
CO₂-emissions per person per year in Europe from textile consumption
1 %
of textiles are recycled into new clothing
2700 l
of water used to produce one cotton T-shirt
2 .1 Bill.
tons of CO₂ emissions in 2018 caused by the global fashion industry
676 M
tons of primary raw materials consumed annually by the EU textile industry
Research Approaches at a Glance
The project partners examine the project topic from various complementary scientific perspectives.
Research on the Future of Work: Resilience Engineering
The transition to a circular economy increases complexity in the textile industry. Processes need to be designed adaptable and robust by specifically strengthening the resilience potentials of processes and teams.
Compliance Management: Acting in Accordance with the Law
New regulations for the textile industry pose major challenges for companies. A digital knowledge platform provides up-to-date expertise to support compliance with legal requirements.
Innovation Transfer Research: Bridging Science and Practice
The transformation to a circular economy can only succeed through the collaboration of many stakeholders. Transfer research examines how knowledge and innovations can be effectively transferred into the textile industry.
Industrial Application: Practical Implementation of Methods, Products, and Concepts
In cooperation with partners from the textile sector, workshops are being developed to support the transition to circular organizational and production processes.
IT: Digital Platform for Knowledge and Collaboration
Work in the circular economy will increasingly involve project-based activities in complex environments. To facilitate collaboration, a digital cooperation platform is being established, providing accessible transformation knowledge and expert resources.
Scientific Background
As part of the European Green Deal, the European Union has set the goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. A key component to achieving this goal is transforming the traditional linear economic model into a resource-efficient circular economy, minimizing waste, excessive resource use, and the consumption of natural raw materials. According to EU requirements, the textile and apparel industry is expected to undergo a fundamental transformation by 2030, shifting from linear to circular production and consumption patterns. Accordingly, the EU Textile Strategy 2030 sets high standards for textiles and apparel placed on the market. In the coming years, numerous new laws and regulations will be introduced both by the EU and by individual member states, specifically targeting the textile and apparel sector in the context of the transition to a circular economy. Managing such complex transformations requires a comprehensive process- and work-science-based approach that considers the interaction of all actors along the textile supply chain. The focus lies on resilience, ensuring that objectives can still be achieved even under challenging conditions.
Companies face the challenge of implementing the transition to a circular economy efficiently, effectively, and sustainably, while minimizing the associated risks. RETRAKT aims to understand and optimize the existing work and process flows of textile and apparel manufacturers operating within the global textile value chain. This will enable them to produce resource-efficient, circular, and recycling-friendly products in the future. Compliance with environmental regulatory requirements under the European Green Deal is a key driver of the transformation to a circular economy in the textile and apparel industry. Implementing this requires effective product compliance management embedded in operational processes. Existing company procedures in areas such as design, procurement, production, and data management must be adapted to meet new legal requirements. Within RETRAKT, resilience engineering provides the systemic framework as well as the analytical and design tools for this transformation. Unlike traditional safety and management approaches, which focus on error prevention and stability, resilience engineering is based on social science research: it places employees and the adaptive performance of organizations at the centre of consideration. The interaction of people and technical systems in operational processes is referred to as a socio-technical system. Resilience engineering addresses the ability of these systems to function successfully under dynamic, uncertain, and complex conditions. Based on practical analyses of existing company processes, the developed tools and methods are tested in practice together with employees. To support the textile and apparel industry technically, a digital collaboration platform is being established.
The project partners examine the project topic from various complementary scientific perspectives.
Research on the Future of Work:
Resilience Engineering of Complex Socio-Technical Systems
Resilience Engineering of Complex Socio-Technical Systems
From a work research perspective, the aim is to design company processes, workflows, and tasks together with employees in accordance with the principles of resilience engineering. The transition to a circular economy leads to a significant increase in complexity and uncertainty in the textile industry. Therefore, future processes must be designed to be adaptable and robust. A holistic approach systematically develops and strengthens the resilience potentials of processes and teams, that is their abilities to anticipate, monitor, respond, and learn.
Compliance Management:
Implementation of Management Methods for Circular Textiles
Implementation of Management Methods for Circular Textiles
The diverse and highly dynamic political regulations affecting the textile industry necessitate an efficient in-house compliance management system. This system ensures, through systematic planning, implementation, and monitoring of measures within an organization, that applicable legal requirements, internal guidelines, and ethical standards are met. The goal of compliance management is to minimize legal risks and maintain the integrity and trustworthiness of the organization.
The newly emerging EU laws and regulations present companies—particularly small and medium-sized enterprises with often very limited personnel resources—with the challenge of managing vast information and knowledge requirements across development, production, distribution, and recycling networks. To meet this challenge, we are developing a robust digital collaboration platform, which provides fast and easy access to up-to-date, reliable information and the expertise required to implement regulatory requirements, thereby substantially supporting the establishment of an internal knowledge base.
Innovation Transfer Research:
Innovations at the Industry and Company Level and Science-to-Practice Transfer
Innovations at the Industry and Company Level and Science-to-Practice Transfer
The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) refers to the worldwide shift toward climate neutrality within the framework of sustainable development as a “Great Global Transformation” (WBGU, 2011). According to the WBGU, such a global climate transformation—and the associated transition from linear to circular production and consumption patterns—can only be achieved through the cooperation of numerous political, scientific, economic, and social actors at various national and international levels.
For the scientific community, this means that such a transformation process cannot occur solely through the linear transfer of knowledge and technology from science to industry. Instead, it emerges through the interaction and inclusion of diverse actor groups. Pfannenstiel and Dautovic (2023) refer to this as a new “multi-directoral understanding of innovation”, involving recursive, feedback-driven, or looping processes.
In this context, transfer research has established itself as a distinct scientific discipline. It is essential to scientifically consider the opportunities, risks, barriers, and obstacles in the innovation transfer toward a global circular economy in the textile sector, both overall and at the EU-regional level, in cooperation toward circular transformation. A particular focus is placed on the transformation of tasks and working conditions within the textile value chain.
Industrial Application:
Practical Implementation of Methods, Products, and Concepts
Practical Implementation of Methods, Products, and Concepts
In cooperation with partners from the textile sector, work-science-based transformation workshops are being developed to increase process resilience, applying the principles of resilience engineering to transition from linear to circular organizational and production systems. In these workshops, resilience-oriented analysis and design of relevant tasks and processes are carried out, generating knowledge requirements as well as task and process models. These models are then processed by the digital collaboration platform, which provides learning and response functionalities in the form of transformation and expert knowledge for the workshops.
Together with the digital collaboration platform, the transformation workshops form a model holistic learning and transformation system centred around a Community of Practice—a practice-based network of individuals—serving as a support tool for the circular transformation of the textile and apparel industry.
IT:
Digital Collaboration Platform for Implementation in the Textile Industry
Digital Collaboration Platform for Implementation in the Textile Industry
Work in the circular economy will increasingly be characterized by project-based activities in complex environments. In this context, the resilience of teams and organizations is significantly supported by user-oriented technical infrastructures that facilitate collaborative knowledge work as a knowledge workshop. To this end, a digital collaboration platform providing accessible transformation and expert knowledge is being established.
Within this framework, we prepare and explain professional information on new country-specific waste and recycling laws, as well as “Design for Recycling” concepts—for example, based on the new EU Ecodesign Regulation for the textile and apparel sector—in a practical, implementation-oriented manner.
Goals, Perspectives, and Funding
Goal
The RETRAKT project aims to comprehensively understand and optimize the existing work and process flows of textile and apparel manufacturers operating within the global textile value chain, enabling them in the future to produce in a resource-efficient, circular, and recycling-friendly manner.
Perspectives
In the long term, the RETRAKT project aims to expand knowledge on the development of circular value chains in the European context beyond the textile sector. To this end, the project contributes to improving transdisciplinary, transnational, and cross-sector collaboration within existing systems. More generally, knowledge and methods for managing complex projects are to be developed for a wide range of industries and applications.
Funding
The collaborative project “Resilient Transformation Management for Circular Economy in the Textile Sector (RETRAKT)” is part of the funding initiative “Shaping Work in European Collaborative Networks (EuKoNet)” within the ESF Plus program “Future of Work”, which is included in the specialist program “Future of Value Creation – Research on Production, Services, and Work” of the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR). The project is managed by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA).