Resortecs

Creator: Cédric Vanhoeck and Vanessa Counaert|Art form: Design, Fashion|Knowledge valorisation : Outreach|Place: Brussels,Belgium|Location : Hybrid|Target group: Academics, Cultural and creative professionals and institutions, Private companies / industries|Domains: Climate Action and Environment|Duration : Long-term Project
Credit: Resortecs
Credit: Resortecs

Design-for-disassembly solutions that enables high-quality textile recycling on an industrial scale

Challenge: How to help textile players to transition from linear to circular production.

The textile industry generates over 1.2 billion tons of CO₂ eq. per year. Every second, one truck full of textiles is wasted across the globe. Resortecs helps textile players transition from linear to circular production.

Resortecs combines thermal engineering, eco-design, and chemical engineering to offer state-of-the-art solutions that empower the entire textile value chain to close the loop. It uses Smart Stitch™ and Smart Disassembly™: Resortecs’ solution for multi-material disassembly in a fast, easy, and cost-efficient manner. “Smart Stitch™ is a range of 16 heat-dissolvable threads – enabling automatic thermal disassembly and design for recycling.
Suitable for a variety of applications, from apparel to fire-resistant workwear, the Smart Stitch™ threads have been exhaustively tested on various production line configurations and are compatible with every stitching machine widely available on the market. Smart Disassembly™ is the world’s first thermal disassembly system – combining the quality of manual methods with the speed of mechanical processes.

A fully automatic process empowering sorters and recyclers to disassemble textile products while removing zippers, elastic bands, and any other trims that hinders recycling 5x faster than manual disassembly. The low-oxygen chamber ensures no risks of fabric oxidation and recyclability rates as high as 90%”

Disclaimer: The description of this SEED is based on publicly available information, here

Resources needed

-Innovative heat dissolvable threads
-Innovative stitching technologies
-Innovative thermal system to dismantle multi-material garments without manual intervention

Purpose of artistic intervention

Textile recycling, an art form coming from Fashion industry, and circularity are becoming crucial points to be addressed for the survival of the textile industry. The surge in urgency in recent years is facilitated by the increasingly tightening regulations on handling textiles at end-of-life and the mandatory use of recycled content, as well as changing demands from critical stakeholders such as investors, media, and end-users.

Positive impacts

-Upon dissasembly phase, trims that block recycling are eliminated automatically and 2x product’s textile content is reclaimed up to 15x faster than with manual or mechanical disassembly and delivering feedstock purity levels of >90%.
-An externally reviewed life cycle assessment showed that adopting Resortecs’ solution and coupling it with effective recycling can lower a denim garment’s CO2 footprint by up to 50%. For every pair of jeans that is recycled and made into a new one, water use can be reduced by about 3 000 litres.

Replication

Resortecs has expanded it’s collaborations with many famous fashion brands (Decathlon, Bershka, Konundrum) and is currently scaling up, discussing off-take agreements with other major fashion players looking to implement its process at scale­­­­.