Ep. 157: Building a textiles bioeconomy

Thank you.

Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to talk about BEAT project.

So this BEAT that stands for Bioeconomy and Textile project was the biggest project that we ever had up to now in Portugal to support the textile industry.

So it was a challenge that was started by the Portuguese government, so under the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

And the main goal of the project was to support the transition for a more sustainable textile industry and circular textile industry.

and also to change the raw materials and to support the transition to leave some fossil-based raw materials and start introduction and change to bio-based materials.

And this was the main objective of the project.

So when we were challenged by the Putchkis government in the bio-economy specific programme of the recovery and resilience plan, That was the biggest challenge.

So how can we start changing the raw materials from fossil based to bio based and renewable raw materials? And that is that was a challenge.

And of course, when we had this challenge, we decided that it's not only about changing the fibres from fossil based fibres like polyester or polyamide to natural-based fibers like cellulosic or even protein fibers.

It's also about the chemistry that we have.

The majority of the chemicals used, including dyes and finishing agents, they are fossil-based.

So we had a lot of challenges.

If we wanted to support the transition, we had a lot of challenges that we need to take into consideration.

And that's why we have constructed these big projects around the full circularity of the textile industry and around different.

So in reality, this big project is actually 58 different research projects inside these big projects.

So they are organized into four pillars.

And in each pillar, we have different R&D projects.

So the first pillar is related to biomaterials, and that's why we have or R&D activities that are related to the change to search for new bio-based fibers, to search for new biomaterials.

The second pillar is dedicated entirely to the circularity of the textile industry.

So we explored not only the circularity of the textile products itself, so trying to promote other end-of-life options apart from recycling that we also explored, of course, but also to reuse to remake products even before recycling and also we have explored also the the use of for the residues from other industries inside the textile industry in order to be able to promote the circularity of the textile value change the third pillar is more dedicated to to create new methodologies and new standards and new protocols to measure this sustainability because it's not only important to have sustainable materials, but we needed really to show that they are more sustainable than conventional counterparts.

And also the digital product passport that was also included in the third pillar.

And finally, the fourth pillar is dedicated to society.

So we have included for the first time in our R&D project, a pillar entirely dedicated to society, where we wanted to also to educate the consumers by one side, but also promote and disseminate all the innovations that we were performing in this research project.