Less than 1% of the world’s textiles are recycled into new textiles, and when three young engineers in the startup Textile Change in 2021 presented a technology that could make a much larger part of the textile industry circular, the jury behind the Bright Idea Award was in no doubt: Here was a winning idea. The jury saw an exceptionally good idea that fit the sustainability agenda and had obvious commercial potential.
The fact that such a small amount of textiles are recycled today is primarily due to the fact that the majority of all textiles are a mixture of different textile fibres. Until now, there has been no technology to handle this, so mixed textiles are usually downcycled into, for example, filling for car seats. But in 2019, three young engineering students Emma Hostrup, Simon Hundahl Rossen and Ditte Højland had an idea and started developing a method to decolourise and separate the different textile types in mixed textiles so that they can be reused as “new”, pure textile raw materials. They presented this in their application for the Bright Idea in 2021.
250.00 kroner boosted the idea
The Bright Idea award came with DKK 250,000 for the winning team to further develop their idea.
“Receiving the award meant that we could move forward and dive even deeper into the colouring technique, which is one of our core technologies. So I would encourage everyone to submit an application if you have a good idea, because the award has definitely done wonders for us,” says Emma Hostrup, Chemical and Biotechnology Engineer.
This is the fifth year that the Otto Mønsted Foundation has awarded the prize and a total of DKK 500,000. The prize is aimed at promising talents at Danish universities who have the right innovative idea, project or process that can make a difference and has commercial potential.
Textile Change currently has an office, laboratory and pilot plant in Vejle’s industrial district.
So far, they have made the method work on a laboratory scale, but in May, they inaugurated a pilot plant where they will make it all work in a closed system.
“It’s going really well. Like everything else, it’s taking longer than we expected, but we’ve run the first tests. It’s gone really well and we’re delighted with the results we’ve got, although there’s always something to optimise. But we’re muddling along,” says Emma.
The company’s next scale-up will be a plant that basically puts recycled textiles in at one end and gets “new” separated textiles out at the other end.
Following the Bright Idea Award, Textile Change has also received support from several other programmes, most recently DKK 560,000 from Women TechEU. The EU funds will be used to conduct tests in collaboration with potential buyers of the recycled textiles. In parallel, the team is working to find investors and other major funds for the development work.
Since 1 July, citizens in many parts of the country have had to sort textile waste, and this year the incineration of textile waste has also been banned and the same set of rules will apply to all EU countries in 2025. All this is fuelling interest in Textile Change’s technology.
“We’re getting a positive reception across the board. Now that everyone is sorting textiles at home, there is more and more focus on the lack of solutions for textile recycling. In general, we hear that we need to hurry up because more people want to be able to use our technology. And we’re hurrying as fast as we can,” says Emma.