 me and textiles. My name is Christina. I'm from Stockholm Environment Institute Talent Center or in short Asia Talent and today's event is organized together with Estonian Environmental Association and is sponsored by Estonian Investment Fund. I am very happy to say that we have today over 100 participants in eight different countries and it shows that this topic is definitely very interesting to a lot of people. So we have also a very interesting lineup of different speakers from several countries from Estonia also from Denmark and from Finland. We're going to give presentations today. Before I give you a short overview of today's speakers and of today's agenda, a few words about the house rules. I would kindly ask everyone to keep your microphones on mute so we wouldn't disrupt the sounds of the presenters. Also if you have questions to some of the presenters please write about them into the chat box. We will keep an eye from our team on the chat box and after the presentation we will come back to the questions you posted there. So the first part of today is going to be in English language. It will be until around noon and after that we will have second part in Estonian language where some of the local initiatives and organizations are going to give overview about what they're doing in the field of textiles. So a short overview about our agenda today. Sorry, sadly there are some technical issues. I'll have to go without the presentation but we will start today with the first presentation is going to be by Red Taus. She is a founder of house design and an ethical designer. After that we will have Harry Mora also from SEI Tallinn who is going to give an overview about circular economy and textiles about the European Union's political context. After that at 11 we will have David Watson, senior expert from Plon million. He will give an overview of the post-consumer textile flows in the Nordic and Baltic countries which is a project financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. At 11.30 we will have a presentation about the Telaketu 2 project in Finland delivered by Pirjo Heikkila from VTT technical research center in Finland. And the last presentation of the first part of the day is going to be at 11.50 by Sini Ilmonen and she will give an overview about the public waste management as a platform for circularity of textiles. Then we will have a short break at 12.10 for 20 minutes and the second part of the day is going to be in Estonian language where we have different best practices from the textile value chain. We will have Stela Somlis, Marie Helene Gober from Humana, Marie-Martin from FreshLab, Gaudira Nyagun from Lindström and Tia Blamos from Faltech who is going to be presenting their initiatives, organizations, businesses which will be followed then by a short discussion. And now I would like to give words to the first speaker of today, Turetaus. Are you online? Yes, I am. Hello. Thank you. Thank you, please. Yeah, good morning and welcome to my home. Nice to talk with you from here. So yes, my name is Rettaus. I'm a founder of house design and upmaid and designer, fashion designer and also a party working in Estonian Academy of Arts as a senior researcher. So a very big part of my last 20, almost 20 years has been research and the topic, my research topic has been environmental issues in fashion and textile industry. So I even wrote down a few facts for you where we could start just to understand how big is the industry and then we can see what are the main problems in that. So in the textiles including industry production, volumes have doubled over the past 15 years. It is a 1.3 trillion US dollars global industry and employing more than 300 million people. At the same time, in Europe, industry employs only 1.5 million people and represents more than 30% of the world market. I think there are quite interesting numbers just to understand how big is the global industry and actually how small people are working in it from Europe. The current system as we know is the linear take, make, dispose model and it really has many, many environmental and social impacts. For instance, total greenhouse gas emissions from textiles production at 1.2 billion tons annually are more. Sorry, Red, you are muted right now. Sorry. Well, how that happened? It's working perfectly. Thank you. Now it's good. How much did you? A sentence maybe. Okay, then it's fine. So, yeah, textiles and fashion is the second biggest polluter in the in the world globally. So that really makes us wonder or at least I have had the question very long time how this possible, why we are not doing better, why the numbers are like this. So for just to understand why it's like this, first of all, we have to understand what's wrong in the industry. And to go through that, of course, it's we have to understand that if we would like to change something, we have to understand what's wrong with it. And for that we would need transparency in the industry, which is right now, we don't have the global industry as we all know, for example, if we take for example, one cotton t-shirt, the life cycle of the product is very long. That's usually cotton is grown in one country, it's pinned in the other fabric is made in the third, maybe the product is put together in the fourth country and then it's shipped all over the world. It's very complicated supply chain. And yes, I completely agree for the big companies, it's difficult to control. It's difficult to keep it transparent. But we should do it. That should be the first step. I think we all agree in that. Because if we don't know how the cotton is grown, how can we change that? If we don't know how much waste we have in the whole supply chain, how we can make the supply chain more resource efficient, etc. So the second big issue, of course, is that we are using non-renewable materials in our products. So they are not recycled. You can't recycle them later on. This is definitely one issue we should see as the oil industry is really the first one. Then we have air pollution and we have a water pollution. We have a lot of chemicals used in the process and these chemicals, they don't only cause damage in the environment where they are used, but they are actually causing problems for the consumers, for the people who are wearing these clothes. A few years ago we made a test in a lab that was in 2013. I guess we were making one documentary and we bought a pair of jeans just from the supermarket. It was Sara's jeans and we took them to the lab in Finland where scientists were actually testing what is the how the fabric would influence the human body. We got very interesting results saying that these jeans are actually highly toxic and better not to use. That was this kind of short fact that shows us that actually we really don't know so much about the chemistry in the textile industry, the impact of it. If the impact for our body is already very toxic, then what happens in the places where the toxicity level is much higher in the factories where the chemicals are used and a lot of factories don't have water like the cleaning systems in place. Basically all these toxins they just end up in the rivers and through that in the sea. Also the very big problem where we are talking more and more is the overconsumption that people are wearing clothes only maybe is average seven to ten times and then they throw it away and of course that brings us to the next big issue and this is the waste issue. Textile waste that has been really my research topic a long time mostly of course in the production but if we see the problem here in Europe for example the post-consume waste has become very very big problem why exactly because of the overconsumption and the other reason why it's so big problem is that we are able to collect only 25 percent of used clothes and from that 25 percent we are able to actually circle or recycle one percent and this is extremely small number if you think about that and we all know that EU is expecting us to start collecting post-consume or textile waste completely by 2025 and we have to find a solution for that we have to circulate all these leftovers back and like now just for almost four years to go and and if you see the solutions but we have out there we understand that actually we don't have capacity to do that even if we are able to collect them all then we really don't have very good solutions so just very shortly about recycling then we have like mechanical recycling and chemical recycling I'm not expert in this area but we have done some tests with mechanical recycling started already around four years ago because I have been working here in Estonia a lot with with our Uskasa Tuskeskus who collects from the Estonian market and tries to trying to find the solution what to do with that and they end up every every month the quite big amount of unsolved clothes they have to find solution for and the one project what we did together was making the old change to the recycler and buying back the yarn and making the new products out of it it was very interesting because first of all it was very difficult to find some recycler who could who could be able to do 100 percent post-continuum retaining we found some we we have actually now tested different yarns actually I have the product here just to show you but we ended up with quite nice products the product itself is like this if you see them I show it closer that when you see them the yarn you still can see them a little bit the 10 minutes and but of course in the first test the quality of the yarn was not very good we struggled a lot to make good quality garment out of it but in the end what was the lesson the the lesson was that we really understood that it's very expensive still it's very complicated and what's the most complicated part in there yes we are able to collect quite nicely already in in many countries the system is there in Estonia we still don't have the the the collecting system in place we have different organizations who are doing that but even if we collect everything then we have to sort the sorting is kind of complicated because it's difficult to understand what material it is and you have to do it by hand so a few years ago I visited the biggest sorting center in Europe it's in Germany and I was really surprised when I saw hundreds of people really sorting our were used close by hand and the problem is that if somebody has cut out the the label where the numbers are in then basically we don't know what material it really is but for the mechanical recycling we need mono materials or like very let's say 97 cotton and then some extra but if you see your clothes for example if you go to the wardrobe you see that most of the garments are made from the mixed materials and that makes recycling really complicated and even the next step when we have sorted all the fabrics and we now have the I don't know many tons of of tanning which is really good for the recycling we still there is still next step we have to clean it up we have to remove the patterns we have zippers all all these kind of things what has has been there what has to be there to use the product and finally when we get the raw material all the process has been so long and so expensive that of course they are in itself comes very very expensive as well and and as the fibrist is quite short then the quality of the of the yarn is not so good that you would be 100 percent sure that you could get very good product out of it and that's the reason why recycling is always a lot mixed with some kind of other raw materials we have visited many factories in in India for example to see the recycling which is really common in in the pig industry because they are using industrial leftovers which is way easier in the two reasons because if they for example the cutting scraps coming from the other factory they know exactly what material it is they take only they take in only mono materials and it's basically pure waste there is nothing no paper no zippers nothing in it so it's very easy to recycle and then they they mix it with man-made fibers or some other other fibers what are virgin and this practice of course is is is very very good and works really well in industrial level but when we are talking about post-consumer waste as I said we're facing a lot of problems yes they if we would use only mono materials it would be much easier like viscose for example it's material what we can recycle like many many times before it goes out from the lifespan life cycle and for the viscose we're using wood basically or the the the paper or even the old cotton scraps we could use for that so it's very important also for designers to understand that actually the materials we are using for our work is very very important because we are actually influencing the whole industry later on so the the other part of waste is pre-consumer waste or industrial waste doesn't matter how we say basically we can say both ways that problem is of course much much bigger in in in countries where the production takes place so it's a little bit the problem is that way that in europe and in the areas where we consume a lot we have huge post-consumer waste problem and the areas where we produce our clothes there the biggest problem is the the industrial leftover so the the fabric waste when we are talking about the the pre-consumer then the amount of that waste is huge it's really really big for example we have been working our company has been working with one very big company in Bangladesh called Vexinco we started to run our test projects seven years ago and now we have our own certified line and we are producing only from their leftovers inside the factory and when we started the project we carried out the proper waste analysis and we understood that more or less 20 percent everything was created there stays as a as a waste and for them it is really a waste because they are the production company they they are not the sales company they are not looking for the for the market to sell scraps or to sell roll lens or just to sell fabric and there are three main type of leftovers in the industry or in the production it's the the cutting cutting leftover which is like small pieces the blouse what i'm wearing my little bit show you you could see from here it's made from the small pieces this is actually was the test years ago to see how we could use the cutting leftovers which we had some measures so from the mentors there was the biggest part was 30 centimeters or something like this and then it was designed the way that we could basically place the pieces for that design into the into the original design cutting just very shortly how the process goes in the production is that if the production starts and then they lay out the the fabric sometimes like they would 50 200 100 depends how big the order layers on the one table the table is usually in the peak production 50 meters long and then on top they place marker marker it's called marker and there is the pattern and always of course they try to do it as efficient as possible but it really depends again how the how is the design some designs or some and some patterns are very efficient so the the marker efficiency can go up to 93 percent but i have seen some designs where the if you place the pattern to the marker the efficiency is only like 45 to 50 percent which means that already from the cutting off of the fabric goes to the waste and this is again i think very good point for the designers that we as designers we should really develop and create designs so with with maximum efficiency when we start to do the pattern and and cut the clothes out so but yes the the most efficient way to reduce the waste would be using methods called upcycling and that's exactly the first place where we could use it where the original product is placed already to the marker we could use all the all the space between the patterns and if we do it in the same time when the original um product is cut out that would be really really efficient the factory would do it in the same time the original product goes to the production one hand to the one side and the upcycle product the small pieces cut out from the same fabric can go to the to the upcycling line the second and the biggest part of the leftovers in the industry is the roll lens so when the layers are done and every roll let's say if the sometimes comes in around 300 rolls for the one order and every roll after doing the the layers every every single roll end which is less than 50 meters is a leftover because they never do the overlapping because of the shade issues and that's really the biggest part of the leftovers and now like last five years mostly our brand has been producing our clothes from from the roll lens it can start from the three meters and it can go up to like a 90 or like sorry 49 meters for example but you can't use these these pieces in the mass production because cutting you have to do by hand and that makes of course the production way more like less efficient but for the upcycling what we do we are using it as a leftover material to with the cutting by hand and our production is not so big for us it's definitely a very good material and of course for the big brands who should actually take care of their own leftovers that would be the material which is kind of they have already paid for it but it's there as a leftover so basically if they if they do the calculation it balances out so the price for the production price will be exactly the same more or less so I show you one more product you know what we have been producing and what has been our kind of best seller this is the arrow shirt this is made from the leftovers and always in-house that also makes upcycling much more valuable or very efficient you don't and you don't transport the leftovers from one place to another but you always go to the factory and produce inside the factory from their leftovers and I think it's the I don't think actually we have done the study and yes this is the most efficient way to reduce waste in the production and all the oh yeah then the third type of leftovers what we have in production is overproduction and that is definitely the most cynical type of waste because when production starts then factories always they produce three to five percent more just to just to cover the gap if there's some not so good quality products then they can replace it and when I first time went to Beximco's waste storage and there was like like a mountain of bags full of products then I climbed up and I took just first product from the from the bag and it was very good quality calving line men's shirt here in the shop I think it's around 200 euros but in that place in that day in Bangladesh it was the waste and and that's Bangladesh doesn't have the proper waste management system then all of this overproduction causes a lot of problems for the factories because they have nowhere to put it so basically if you travel around the production areas in Asia in India or in Bangladesh or in other places you really see the problem out there very strongly of course some of the fabrics some of the the overproduced items they are able to sell in the black market they cut out the labels and they try to sell it a lot of these overproduced items actually come here to Europe as well and we buy it from our second hand shops but more or less it's still if you see how big is the wastage and how they how it mostly ends up just in the nature and it's toxic waste it's just rotten there all the chemicals go to the ground ground water and and people living in these areas and they are drinking that water which is highly toxic of course so it's a complex issue and as I said without transparency it's very difficult to change something in there so now we have been talking a lot about what's wrong in the industry it would be good if we think and brainstorm what we could change what we could do to change it and how then actually would be a good way to produce our clothes and I think the the answer we all know it's it's a circular economy it's circularity EU and the Green Deal was published the last year and the action plan what came out now in in the March that puts a lot of effort to the and really stresses how strongly that circularity is something what we should implement to our production and to our economic system and I completely agree with it because we have all the knowledge how to do it we have very practical case studies we have understanding what should we change and when we start from the beginning of the life cycle and then of course we have to start producing and developing monomaterials the materials we could keep in the loop years and years for example as I mentioned cellulose is one of them but I think the main and the core issue is that they really have to be monomaterials and of course we all know that cotton is not so good from the environmental point of view we should definitely reduce producing cotton how we make our clothes I think the as we all know the the text like the clothing production has been the same way almost from the beginning the sewing machine is still the same it's the industry where we're doing it exactly the same way than 100 years ago I think it's it's one of the funniest thing in that industry and it's it's not going to change probably because everything what we can make more efficient for example talking about placing the market the pattern to the market we already have done but still that's the industry but always needs a lot of manpower because of because it's so complex so and then when we are talking about how much waste all these industries producing then definitely the two key methods here are upcycling and recycling what really helps us to circulate the leftovers back upcycling is the most efficient way to do it because we don't have to invest new technology we don't have we don't need some different machinery we just take the material as it is and we produce new products out of it the only thing what we need is very good designer who would be able to really design from the leftover materials the new products what we can actually sell and what what would be successful when we are talking about recycling then recycling has to come in when all the materials we are not able to upcycle should go into the into the recycling and yes even I'm not expert in that area but still I can see that we really lack different ways to do it we lack actually successful companies doing it in the mass production level and I think this is the big challenge what the industry is facing but first step still is transparency that we really every company has has to take responsibility of every step starting from the raw material till the end like what's the what I will what's as a company I do with the product when the consumer actually bring it back to me every the circular circularity really brings up the topic as well that how our peak companies will handle their own waste after consumer has brought that back and that's going to happen definitely companies have to take their responsibility so our company has been testing with different ways to deal with the post consumer waste as well we had very nice project with ladies weaving the carpets for us there are millions and millions of different possibilities but still a lot of them are very studio based and small and not in the big production so just to summarize I would say we also should look into the educational system to see that are we able to to educate the designers who know how to enter the circular business model and how to how do you use it in the smart way the idea of circularity and also we really need designers who who know all the process and who who have this lifecycle thinking in their back back in the brain so strongly that they they always think back and forward not only how to make beautiful products but also how the products would be well done and recyclable later on so that's all I a little bit went over my time but I hope you got the message thank you thank you red it was very interesting presentation as we can see that's textile industry when you talk about it raises a lot of ethical environmental and also socio-economical issues which you addressed quite well and you gave a very good overview of the whole textile value chain I have one question to you I would like to ask so we have currently a crisis going on we cannot ignore it in today's situation uh we see that the demands from different goods also textiles is decreasing we see a different supply chains are disrupted definitely countries I can imagine like Bangladesh might be affected by it because their economy is based basically on the textile industry but what do you think can the current crisis can we have some kind of positive outcomes for the textile industry out of current crisis of course there is always something positive in everything what happens but this crisis is really challenging I think especially because the global supply chain is completely crashed right now for example India closed all the factories 25th of March and Bangladesh followed two days later and as we actually have the the partners in the both countries we are in the same situation that our production is is not working and I talk with the factories almost every day and it's very interesting for example what's happening in Bangladesh right now because for them the biggest problem right now is actually hunger that because of the crisis and factories closed down they are not they are not able to feed the poor people so and I it seems that they will open the factories already like quite soon and then it will be kind of then we really don't know what will happen and this is it's a one point it's understandable because they they're really facing two problems and one is not better than the other one it's just really two very bad choices but because of the rioting and the situations they will probably open the factories quite soon but then the virus will take over anyway and then it's completely difficult to see what's what's going to happen the other hand I think it's the perfect time to come more local we already found new partners in Estonia and in Poland for example and talking with some factories in in in Latvia years years ago before starting producing in the big industry we had partners here in Estonia as well but life here is so much better and our our waste management system has been so good that the need of upcycling in our smaller companies was not it was not there yet but now because of the the 2025 and of course the price of the the waste management has been growing as well even smaller companies they have to they start to understand the need of the upcycling the need of to really take care of the leftovers and as a entrepreneur I can see the crisis is really really good for for the smaller brands in the way that to bring the the production back more local that actually gives the possibility to to really make all the process much more transparent that because everything is so close when we talk about Estonia such a small country very flexible it's it's very very easy to implement the circularity in here like for example industrial symbiosis everybody knows everybody like something like some waste from one place is this like good raw material for the other I think this crisis really if we use it well if we know what to do it would be extremely good moment to start this like local circular model here inside the Europe to bring as much as possible back and that would also give us a little bit more security okay thank you very much thank you very much for your presentation and for your answer we will now move on for our next presenter Harry are you with us yes good morning also from my side I tried to share my slides I hope you you see them yes I was also thinking about the impact of the crisis and and since I have to give a very short presentation this time right yes you have so much time but since you have heard me so many times I try to be very short but I can't really resist in saying few words about this nice coronavirus crisis that we have in a way it's interesting we have I started to think about that and then in in a way by from the consumption point of view and if I started to think started to think how much or what I have bought during last month and it's only a food stuff so in a way this corona crisis has shifted us to the in a way dream future which we actually many of us wanted to see from the sustainability point of view the only problem is that I'm afraid when this virus or the crisis is over quite many of us will quickly go out to satisfy their in a way their dreams and you know we all in a way from the psychological point of view would like to fulfill our needs so but I really hope that we can do that in a much more sustainable way and today as I understand in the second part of the event we can hear some of the very nice examples which in a way allow us to consume much more sustainable way but as we heard from Reit actually the sustainable or let's say circular textile system is very complicated because it's it's a global it's it involves many stakeholders many actors so the question on how to reach to this circular or sometimes we can also say flow textiles economy it's really a challenge in a way because we have so many aspects to tackle so many problems and caps Reit very nicely gave us an overview what are those those main problems in this system so to say so starting from design so we definitely need to redesign the products so to make them more circular at the end of the life cycle so the problem related to collected waste streams materials as such so Reit already mentioned that of course it would be preferable to have shorter supply chains but we have to take into account that the textile industry is really a global industry so we produce the textiles and carments in one part of the world and we consume them widely in the other part of the world so how to really bring those flows back to those places where we can really consume them in terms of producing new products so the technology so it's a real challenge so how to really develop those technologies to really allow to go for more recycling there is a need to really support that area it's not very economically feasible as we heard also business models so we definitely need to think on how to make these those cycles more longer this is also important often the circularity has been understood that this is very much related to recycling so making or closing this circle but it's not so so if we really would like to have a sustainable circular textile economy then we really have to make those circles much slower so we need to have a new business models and last but not least of course we have to create a demand and this is I would say the biggest problem in this complex system so of course we all have a in a way role to play here especially when it comes to the industry and consumers but it's quite clear that we also need effective policies to try the circular textiles economy we need to change the system and we have to really come over with the current linear or let's say market economy based system which really doesn't allow us to go for more circular economy in the textile sector and also other sectors so we need those supportive effective policies and we have to really focus on those policies on every lifecycle of textiles starting from materials and design but also production and distribution collection waste management use reuse recycling and so on but often of course we have understood that this is very much related to let's say waste related policies and that's true when it comes to current policies and legal requirements we often talk about waste management but if we want to go for for more global or really a system-wise different circular textile system then we have to really integrate the circularity aspects to different policies not only materials chemicals and products and waste but also public procurement trade policies innovation policies industry policies so this means that we are not talking here about environmental problem and often we are also here in Estonia tend to talk about circular economy as a as a part of environmental policy and often this has been seen as as the responsibility of ministry of environment so I think this is one of the biggest in a way challenges we have to see this issue not in different levels also on policy level as a as an integrated overreaching issue and here I hope that also during our seminar we have here participates from other ministries and other policy areas who really take into a content and then integrate in this issue into different different areas so of course european european union has put lots of attention on on textiles in its circular economy agenda and it's it's obvious in a way because as we heard textiles and fashion industry is one of the biggest polluter it's very resource intensive industry and that's why it has to play a significant role in this circular economy policy context recently european commission has adopted a new circular economy action plan which is one of the main blocks of this overreaching european green deal which is i would say the main and the only agenda for sustainable growth for european union and according to this plan the commission will then propose soon a comprehensive european union strategy for textiles as it has been already done in the case of plastics so we can expect quite many regulatory and not non-regulatory instruments to become in life in in close future which will tackle all those issues which we already have today introduced briefly so basically we need a sustainable product framework for textiles starting from really developing a new and circular textile products we have to face out hazardous chemicals which was also interesting which is has not been too much emphasized before because often when we are talking about circularity we tend to forget that chemicals and especially hazardous chemicals this is definitely a part of circularity questions so we really have to face out how the hazardous chemicals which are related to the textile industry so again developing a business and regulatory environment which really support the the the environment or ecosystem for new business models starting from product to service models circular materials upcycling recycling all those new developments which which where there are quite many nice examples but which due to certain obstacles especially economic barriers are not so successful yet reet also mentioned this this kind of challenge which we all as member state face which comes through the waste legislation as part of the circular economy package we or most of us we know that member states they have to start to collect the textile used textiles and it's not only used textiles in terms of the textiles that we can still reuse but also textile waste by 2025 and we can also expect that European Commission will come up with targets for recycling and most probably also for reuse before that deadline so we need really a boost and a very quick development of of all those technological and also business related developments starting from sorting reuse also repair all these business approaches which have been actually earlier or years ago been very common but which are dying out slowly so we have to come back to that for sure plus of course new innovative approaches which can be done based on totally new technologies first of all IT solutions and then of course at the end of the day we should always question who will pay for it and we see here clearly that European Commission is very serious to thinking of introducing extended producer responsibility principle also in textiles area we all know about the packaging or waste electronics or tires collection system which is based on extended producer responsibility but how to introduce it into textiles and garments this is really a question especially when it comes to let's say stony or the Baltic states where we have actually quite bad experience in really introducing or implementing the transparent extended producer responsibility system so so we have many many issues to think over so from one side if we now come to the European let's say the member state level then of course yes yes so this is almost the last slide so I can say that the European policy is of course the basis for all of us as member states to develop our own policy goals and targets and also defining and implementing certain policy measures and it's very important that we will take into account the local context and we need a proper information for that so we need to do a proper review and analysis of the current system so after me David will present you a nice overview of of waste situation and also textiles circular system today in three Baltic states so this type of knowledge is very very important to to really introduce the policy measures and what I also can say and I'm not going to go into details here in the in the frame of the Nordic Ministry of Council Finance project or what's to Nordic Baltic Circle Textile System we will soon present a report which will then cover nicely the recommendations which we have developed together with quite many of you industry and other stakeholders so I hope that this this report will be available for all of you and you can then read it and really I hope that the policy makers soon will start to develop these policy measures because as we have understood there is no time to wait it's time to act so this is shortly all from that side so as I said we will keep you posted concerning the potential policy recommendations so keep updated and you get the information from SCI website as well as the website of Estonia Association for Environmental Management thank you very much and now let's move on to David Watson from Plan Miljö right can you can you hear me now yes we can hear you good so I will share my slides if I can just a second this one are you getting that yes we have it good okay so nice to to see you all out there it's very odd to be talking to over a hundred people over my computer not being able to hear anyone or see anyone but at least I can see your names and you can't normally do that in a conference so maybe this is the future of conferences it's definitely more sustainable to do it this way so I'm going to talk quite briefly about a project which we've been carrying out for the Nordic Council of Ministers led by SCI and including these four different consultants at the bottom here plus another consultant in Latvia hello someone's not Harry you need to mute Harry okay someone's coming through you're not muted yeah sorry so I'll carry on this is a project that began in 2018 towards the end of 2018 and the the well I took about the goals in the second the background to the project just forward is as you already heard there's an increasing focus on sustainability in the textile valley chain in Europe this has been now a focus area in some countries for about five to eight years in other countries it's just beginning route already told you about the environmental impacts of the textile consumption and production if you look at at at product groups then it's the fourth largest product group in terms of environmental impacts in of all the different product groups that we we consume in Europe and one way not the only way but one way of reducing the impacts of the consumption and production of textiles is through this so-called increasing of circularity it's not the only way clean of production is another example simply reducing our consumption is a real clear way of of achieving this but when we talk about circularity and and Harry's already made this point we don't mean recycling recycling is one is like the outer I don't know if you will know the the Ellen MacArthur famous butterfly but the recycling is basically the very last circle so what we want to do is change from the top picture where someone has a pair of jeans quite fat jeans these one and then the user for a few weeks and then they have them in their closet unused for a long time and then but while it's still got functional lifetime they basically throw it out and it gets incinerated or landfilled so what we want to get to is is another picture where the functional lifetime of a product is actually much extended much longer so they're much more durable products they're used for their full functional lifetime not just by one user maybe by several users and this is again through several different kinds of business models that enable sharing this could be used in different countries doesn't have to be in the same country could be across the globe and then when they finally can't be repaired or can't be used any longer then they can be recycled perhaps upcycling reek was very this I very much liked her her presentation of the upcycling which is is is environmentally better than mechanical chemical recycling but anyway fed into new textile products and so this is the kind of the secularity we're trying to get to and as you already heard the EU have got the circular economy package which talks about very much these issues equal design is needed separate collection is needed of of textiles and also yeah he could design to ensure that everything can be reused as far as possible and then re recycle when it when it no longer can be reused the Baltic states already this project was for the Baltic states all three and they already played quite a key role in circularity of the Nordic textiles which is why the Nordic Council of Ministers was involved in the or wanted to initiate this project because actually a lot of the the used textiles in in the Nordic countries end up being sent to the Baltic states for for sorting detailed sorting and and some reuse but also some export re-export for reuse and recycling elsewhere so does this have an impact on the Baltic countries own circularity of their post-consumer textiles that was one of the key questions of this of this project and just to pick up on something that we said about the about the sorting sorting has to be manual and the reason for that is you're sorting primarily for reuse there's no money in recycling the money's in the reuse and so you can't and you can't sort by a machine for reuse only for recycling but the once you've done the the sorting for the reuse then there's because there's kind of technologies now that are very close to industry level where you can do automatic sorting by material type but we'll come to that so the goal of the mapping this was to provide a detailed picture of the flows of textiles new unused textiles in the Baltic states which could be used as a basis for then developing policy and then identifying challenges and opportunities for the region and potential policy initiatives that can be developed to take advantage of these so that was the basic the goals of this project which is now coming to an end our report is almost finalized and should be out there end of June so I won't dwell on this slide but this is basically what we wanted to find out and the method for getting there so we made a lot of use of of existing data in terms of import export data trade data and production data domestic production data in the three countries we carried out surveys of the current collectors of used textiles including charities commercial collectors municipal waste companies and so on we also carried out because we wanted to find out what was happening in the in the the wholesale sector so as I said the Baltic countries are big importers of used textiles from other parts of the world so we also interviewed companies working in this area the the wholesalers and we also looked at trade data on used textiles so these are the kind of main sources of our of our data consumption of textiles this is the first area consumption new and used textiles in the three countries this is the consumption in terms of euros euros per capita this is readily available from from euro stats as you can see on the left we've got the EU average the Baltic countries consumption is a little less than well Estonia is a little less than EU average Latvia is significantly less about half Lithuania somewhere in between the blue is the clothing expenditure and clothing and this is household expenditure and the red is household textiles so this is this is bed clothes and towels and bed yeah and tables tablecloths and so on so expenditure on that is quite a lot lower than on clothing if you look at the consumption by volume so by by in kilograms per capita you can see here that Estonia is again quite a lot higher than the other two countries actually more than twice the consumption Latvia this consumption data is for 2018 and actually consumption of home textiles household textiles so that the bed linen so on is extremely high in Estonia compared to what we normally expect we've looked at 2017 data as well and that showed exactly the same results so we're not totally sure whether this is realistic or whether there is some consistent mistake in the data but the same result was found for for more than one year so we don't know quite the cause of this so consumption in Estonia is relatively high 12 kilograms per capita Latvia 6 kilograms per capita but in consumption in Latvia and Lithuania is it is growing extremely rapidly so just between 2017 and 2018 it was increasing by 37 percent in in Lithuania 25 percent in Latvia only 9 percent in Estonia but still that's still quite a fair growth I'm assuming that now with Corona maybe we'll see a reduction in in 2020 but let's let's find out in a year or two yep now this is that was new clothing now we have the consumption of used clothing added on to that so as you see the consumption of used clothing and used and textiles is actually quite significant it's around 2.4 to 2.7 kilograms per person in the Baltic states and and this makes up almost a third of consumption in Latvia and Lithuania a sixth of consumption Estonia this is very high most of this consumption most of these used textiles that are being consumed are not the textiles that have been collected from households in the same countries but they're the ones that are being imported from from elsewhere in Estonia that's not totally the case is about a fifth of the new of the second hand consumption is it's been recirculated within the country in the other two countries it's almost entirely from from imports so if we compare this consumption rates to some other so these are some countries we've recently done mapping for in the in the Nordics consumption rates are lower in in the Baltics but in Estonia not that much lower but significantly the consumption of used textiles is much higher Denmark is apparently the highest consumption of used textiles in the Nordics but still that only represents around 10 percent of total in Norway it's less than 1 percent so this is something some differences to bring out between the Nordics and the Baltics now we move on to collection of used textiles in the three countries so who's carrying this out it's quite different between the three countries in Estonia it's dominated by the charities and some municipal waste companies that are doing the collection with the commercial collectors actually quite coming on the scene only relatively recently and only having 17 percent of collection in in Latvia the charities are also is quite dominant two-thirds of collection whilst in Lithuania it's the commercial collectors that are that are more dominant but but important to see that the municipal waste companies in both Estonia and Lithuania have quite a high share of the collection and this is this is a collection they're carrying out themselves this isn't collection that the charities or commercial companies are carrying out in civic community sites like recycling centres but actually what they're doing themselves so it's interesting to see what difference is and what happens to the treatment of this yeah so collection is mostly happening via bring banks and these are on the streets or in civic community centres I said or sometimes indoor collection in shops and very much donations over the counter in second-hand shops and charity shops and so on there's no door-to-door collection in in the Baltic states maybe that'll come after 2025 or towards 2025 we'll see separate collection from households in terms of volume Estonia is represents two-thirds of all the collection and carried out in the Baltic states and tons you saw the split between the charities and municipal waste companies before but there's about nearly 5 000 tons of used textiles collected from households every year in in Estonia only around 5 600 tons in Latvia 2000 tons in Lithuania because the Estonian collection is so high this also represents a much higher share of textiles new textiles and placed on the market so these percentages here in the bold this gives the percentage of of the new textiles placed in the market which are collected separately like not necessarily the same year but at some point so 30 percent of of of textiles that are consumed by or purchased by households in Estonia at some point end up being delivered somewhere separately for reuse and recycling if you look at the the consumption of new and used together and that's about 25 much lower in Latvia and lower in Lithuania as well so Estonia is actually doing quite well in terms of collection if we compare it to other parts of Europe these are the countries with with available data right now so you see the green is the consumption in kilograms per capita of new textiles and then the purple is the collection of used textiles and then the percentage is is the percentage that the collection of used represents of textiles placed in the market so as you can see my old country I no longer live there live in Denmark is a ridiculously huge consumer of of of textiles more than around 27 kilograms per capita I've no idea why I think it's mostly really bad quality budget textiles huge quantities there Estonia is lower than the than the Baltic countries but not that much lower Lithuania Latvia quite a bit lower than all the other countries and with with data and the collection rates in Estonia are similar to Sweden more than Finland but that was quite old data so we don't know what the what the newer data is so Estonia is not doing so bad but but things can definitely be improved what happens to the textiles after they're separately collected we've heard a little bit already from read on this if we look at all the Baltic countries as a whole what the fate is of these textiles so they're they're basically some of them are if there's collection over the counter then there doesn't necessarily need to be any sorting of that there can be directly donated but a lot of them are sorted before anything happens and then these are sorted into different fractions which have then decided what happens to them afterwards reuse in within the country represents 13 percent or did in 2018 of the total collection so this is kind of the top quality this is the best qualities that can be reused locally then there's a little bit very little amount of recycling within the country and this is almost entirely Lithuania but this is happening there's almost no recycling whatsoever within Estonia and in Latvia quite a large amount is is exported for reuse and recycling elsewhere once it's been collected and that's also true of what's being sold to the whole sailors this 15 percent down there on the on the left this is sorry this is what's happening for the for all collectors so I'm going to show you what's happening to the individual types of collectors in a minute you can for all collectors no less than 42 percent after collection is actually then being wasted so it's been collected separately but it's seen as having no value in some way so 42 percent is then being landfill or incinerated this is is quite high if you look at the on the right hand side the charitable commercial collectors this amount is actually only 15 percent so they're making use of 85 percent of of what they're collecting so so 15 percent they can't use for anything if you look at the other types of collectors this is a hugely different there's there's one main brand collecting I think you will know who it is collecting in the Baltic states all of this is exported for reuse recycling elsewhere so it's been exported for for sorting in in Germany and then some is mostly reused and then there's some recycling and some waste the right hand side here this is the bit of the shocker this is what's happening to the textiles that are collected by the waste companies so 97 percent is being landfill or incinerated why is that in Estonia there's at least the excuse that in some civic community centers or quite a lot there's some charities that are set up a separate collection there of the reusable so anything that comes into the to the municipal waste companies own containers is basically non-reusable supposedly there's probably some reusable there and right now since there are no recycling possibilities for in Estonia or very few the waste companies don't have any anywhere to send this and they've been looking at opportunities but but often in some cases they've basically been collecting it because they have to so in in Estonia waste companies are supposed to I just show you the Estonian figures here that was for the Baltic before but this is Estonia so basically all the textiles collected by the waste companies landfill or incinerated and and they have to legally they have to set up separate collection of textiles but basically once they collect it they just burn it or they landfill it hopefully this is going to be changed in the near future they're looking for a possible remark markets now and this is a bit of a chicken and egg so what they're saying is we can't find markets until we know what we've got so we're doing they're doing sorting now to find out what it is they have and then they can start finding markets but we hope to see that this this will change very much in the future yeah so this is perhaps surprising for some move on so now to the wholesale sector so that was before what's happening domestically to the domestically collected textiles now if we look at the wholesale sector so the importers they the Baltics are importing a lot of used textiles particularly Lithuania so Lithuania importing more than 60 000 tons a year Estonia 10 000 tons a year if you compare this to the domestically collected used textiles it's it dominates particularly in Lithuania so the used textile market is very much about imported textiles less so in Estonia where the domestically collected represents about a third of total used textiles that are coming in or exist in the in the country if you look at this in terms of kilograms per capita the Baltic states represent three of the top four importers of used textiles in in Europe Lithuania is is is the is the largest then Netherlands and after that it's Latvia and Estonia so 23 kilograms per capita in Lithuania eight kilograms per capita in Estonia that's being imported and this is a little less than than consumption new textiles but not that much less and much more in Lithuania than consumption new textiles what happens to the imported textiles well they're as I say they're they're imported they're to to to big facilities varying size facilities but some of them are very large where they're sorted manually and the and the basic reason for doing the the sorting the basic reason for the importing is for the reuse markets that's where the money is it's in the reuse so the the importers don't really want any waste but they get some anyway because what they're importing for the most part is is a so-called original which means what's being delivered directly to the bring banks in other countries and then it's sent out to the sorting the sorting facilities untouched and then they're sorting it manually and then some of it is being so they're sorting into several hundred different kinds of fractions different types of clothing different sizes different styles and so on quite a lot of this is actually being reused locally so particularly in Estonia 26 percent of what's being imported is actually is actually then sold for reuse on local domestic markets less so in Lithuania more in in Latvia some is being exported for reuse in other parts of the world so all together actually 53 percent of what's being imported to Estonia is then reused somewhere and another 39 percent is being recycled in the case of Estonia all of this is being recycled elsewhere so there's no recycling of textile waste in in Estonia um yep so moving on so the key messages what am I doing for time oh yeah so just got a few message quick messages here most of them I've already said so consumption patterns are relatively sustainable at the moment is relatively low I wouldn't say sustainable but they're more sustainable than other countries because they're the consumption is relatively low of new clothing but it's increasing rapidly so this is something to look at uh and needs to be addressed um clothing tends to be used more intensively before being discarded which is which is one reason why the reuse rates of domestically collected textiles are lower than in other countries because basically they've been used until they're in a in a in they've been used much more intensively so they're not readily reusable to a large extent this is a good thing um not necessarily good for the collectors but it's good for the sector economy that people are using them until they're falling to pieces much more often than than say in the Nordic countries so these the the Baltics aren't throw away societies but maybe they're getting there um consumption of second hand is high as I already said a third of consumption Latvia Lithuania a sixth in Estonia but domestic collection treatment of used textiles is struggling collection rates are relatively low particularly in Latvia Lithuania um majority of textiles is still ending mixed waste and this is mostly being landfilled so it's being wasted the quality and value of collected textiles is low and is falling this may be partly fast fashion uh but it can also be because people are using it more intensively um um there's relatively low reuse rates of collected textiles domestic collected textiles only around 40 to 55 45 percent which is lower than say in Denmark where it's around 65 to 70 percent of uh of domestic collected textiles which are eventually reused um and and the the domestic collection can't compete in quality with what's being imported so that's really important so what the charities and commercial companies are collecting in in the Baltics can't compete which with the quality of what's being which imported from overseas and this is both for the reusable but also the recyclable in both cases there are very few local recycling options especially Latvia and Estonia um and so a very high share is being disposed of to land from incineration of what's being separately collected and this is particularly true of what's being collected by the waste companies um i'd skip the next one over because that's only true for Latvia and Lithuania there is cooperation between charities and commercial collectors and the waste companies in Estonia which is a good thing um but the economic viability of collectors is really challenged and this is particularly true in rural areas and as we move towards 2025 when we're going to be collecting much more volumes of textiles there's going to be much more volume of low quality textiles and this is going to be really undermined the economic viability of the collectors which is already really marginal so they're very worried about the future um the wholesale sector offers some challenges but also opportunities yes i said three of the four largest imports per capita have used textiles in the EU uh the Baltic countries the Baltics are providing circular economy services to the Nordics and elsewhere in Europe by by importing and uh and and sorting and and finding markets for these uh used textiles and it's generating the same time somewhere between 2 000 4 000 jobs in the region and 18 percent of these imported textiles are resold with second hand within the Baltics but 17 000 tons of textile waste is generated from the from the wholesale sector um for recycling 12 000 tons of these are exported recycling elsewhere couldn't we somehow isn't there like um an opportunity here for more recycling within the Baltics there's there's thousands of tons available there just waiting for for someone to to develop new technologies to to locate in the Baltics and generate the huge new business models that that could uh that could arise um and that could also concern the 7 000 tons of textiles waste that are just being landfill or incinerated um so i see there being a lot of opportunities here because of this this uh this proximity of the of the of the wholesale sector this this uh in the Baltic countries which which will allow it which provides good opportunities for for for recycling uh and technologies to to be located in the Baltics which will then assist the local collectors so but but these all need support we need also we need uh i feel there's an opportunity for large-scale upcycling redesign as read was also talking about um because of the the supply of used fabrics good quality fabrics low labor costs and skilled workers um perhaps for sale back to Nordic markets so i think that this could be a real opportunity um and another opportunity is that the circular consumption culture already exists in the Baltics it's existed for for many many decades um and but it needs to be supported to continue all these opportunities need policy and money to start up and support so we need to find out how to do this thanks a lot for listening just gone over time thank you thank you very much david um we will not take questions at this moment because we're running a little bit behind of the time so i will let's get uh to our next presentation by Pirjo Heikele about the telaket you too can you see my uh image now yes we can see your image yeah i just shortly show myself and then i will start sharing my screen and you see that now yes we can see it okay so uh hello everyone uh i'm Pirjo Heikele and i'm very thankful ask for presenting our activities in Finland so i'm been coordinating telaket you activities it's network and it's research activity and i tell you about that and how we have been able to to make a change the word circularity of textiles in Finland to start VTT technical research center of Finland is uh kind of creating sustainable growth by tackling global challenges uh textiles and and turning them in the in the circular are really one of those those global challenges and need for sustainable development VTT is a huge multi-disciplinary technology organization over 2 000 employees and but maybe we don't go into detail is now we work with the companies directly with the partnerships we do joint projects and work through innovation ecosystems and our spot in the in the research team in Finland is that we are doing applied research while universities are more focused on basics and then uh industry in in they development work so we are doing cooperation with all of them and and focusing on applied work these are our kind of main focus areas climate tax and resource efficiency industrial renewal all closely related to textile circular economy but as we have already heard today uh chemical issues environmental issues social issues related to textile uh production at the moment it's all also kind of safety and and good life issue so what VTT has been doing earlier before this this telaketyl we started and I have been involved in in this kind of circular economy and recycling projects since 2015 and we started with the relooping fashion initiative where we made this kind of model how what how circular business ecosystem for textiles should look like this is there are similar images drawn by other other organizations as well but we put the users on top and have the inner circles going around them so reuse sewing here in in green and then kind of recycling cycles in blue and during that that project we kind of started making thinking what should be one part of that project was making this kind of pilot how to recycle old cotton clothes in the new new fabrics but when we were kind of ending of this project and there was other activities going on in Finland especially in Turku area textile 2.0 together with our project group and and the other project group we started to think that we have to start building this kind of ecosystem and that was kind of initiation of telaketyl work we start making application 2016 and this is the first phase of of research started 2017 this was the image which we used for kind of communicating about our plans for companies and other organizations involved in textile recycling so focus where in the first stage more on recycling part we wanted to understand supply of materials how to collect them how to sort how to refine and make final products out of out of these materials but we can shortly notice that there are so many different kind of organizations involved and the funding tools for research are very focused on certain type of organizations or work but there was a kind of good opportunity for us that Ministry of Environment so why I'm mentioned here is was having this kind of call for experimental circular economy experimentations and and Tekes currently known as business Finland has a kind of continued opportunity for research organizations apply funding together with companies so we were able to kind of include municipal waste management organizations Lona Somini at the Hultusini will be talking about right after me about the activities but they were coordinating the other part and we're able to include recycling centers public participant charities and so on while Tekes or a business Finland part was kind of funding companies and and research organizations and and Delakety is not just kind of single project or or or research activities also active network composing of all organizations who are involved directly in these activities or doing cooperation with us these are participants of Delakety YM and Tekes projects and like I said that we also had when we did a lot of cooperation with other other Finnish organizations involved in in these textile cycles in there but focus were collecting sorting and recycle chain of textiles and and we have written English language report about the Tekes project including also kind of main points from from YM project as well just to show some kind of examples what we did there was for example collection trials with two box systems reusable and textile waste collected in the same place directly from consumers we studied identification and sorting so manual sorting as well as as kind of automated sorting and and how technology can be used for for identification of textiles we had some kind of theoretical work as well for example what kind of what is the property and sorting requirements for textile waste materials for different kind of recycling processes so there are also more theoretical work but my favorite especially where those demonstrations so practically so how different kind of textile fraction fractions can be recycled and these demonstrations were done by companies and by research organizations and in many cases also in cooperation so so multiple organizations were included on the same same demonstration or it was kind of chain of of demonstrations and and here are some examples for example how to how we made yarns from kind of mixed waste infinite viper company recycled cotton in the new risen rich and eroded cellulose fibers we have these towels made from jeans also work loading by touch point composite side pillow pillows can be kind of all in recycled into composite materials so polyester filler and cotton topping together make a composite then non woven materials acoustic panels and furnace so different kind of materials tested and and demonstrated during our first phase but then that came into end then more than one year ago and then we started to think what to do next alone I saw many other who all had ongoing activities about refinement plant and you will hear about those from Sydney but the while that was going on we started kind of public research by business Finland funding to go alongside with that and in this second phase we we started to have a kind of business from the circular economy of textiles while in the first phase our focus very kind of more on recycling now we also wanted to include this novel circular business models which aim for kind of material efficiency and and also material life cycles and product life cycles but also of course this recycling is is still included here so now we have two year public research project it's co-innovation type project of business Finland so it means co-innovation between research organizations companies as well as other other organizations this co-innovation part requires that we have company projects who applied funding also from business Finland so we now have four company projects and then we have this public project part which is carried out by VTT and Turku and Lahti universities of applied sciences and now you can see that the share of company involvement company project this is is three quarters of total budget so total budget of all all these research activities in the second phase combined is is almost five million euros and and what is alone as a matter of working here it's doing cooperation with the with the other other funding they have but this is only kind of seven participants we actually have 31 participants in delegate you to business Finland projects and how are the other organizations that are not having their own research or development project they were able to participate by co-fund the public part so business Finland covers 60% of of the costs of public funding and then our research organizations have their own funding share but other companies and other organizations were able to have partner role by co-funding this public part we have multiple companies in the first selection and other non-profit and other type of organizations also so Finnish fashion textile and passon association for example is one of the of the funding partners in this this work so in this way we are able to have a large group of different kind of organizations involved here is also the logos of the of the partners of this delicate you do business Finland projects site and what we do in in this public part we have recycling here but we have kind of more wider for for topics around circular economy and I shortly saw what these work packages kind of mainly include in most projects they are management work packets but we included networking into it so we have seen that we really have to network outside of Finland in order to to have this kind of full value chains and understanding what is technology development and best practices in other countries so we are networking widely nationally and internationally as well and this coming here to talk through is of course one of these these activities of the network then we have one work package focusing on business models so in that work we study what kind of business models there are go develop business models together with the companies who are involved in in our approach and also we kind of try to understand how we how these companies should communicate what they do within the value chain and to their customers as well so understanding of these kind of communication activities in as well we have work package which is for products and materials and what that means is that we really take a review of of this how product designing phase affects the lifespan of the materials and products so this kind of designers guide for circular economy we also study what kind of product information or material information to be included in the material can benefit in circular economy it can provide transparency but it can be also helping with the recycling part product safety and many other issues not just this kind of the transparency and traceability and then we also kind of study biopaste material solutions for textiles new fibers new chem chemistries how to replace this more harmful one with the biopaste solutions in recycling part in public work we still kind of develop concept for textile collecting and pre-sorting study textile identification technologies and and also sorting systems and we have wanted to have some kind of draft of understanding of classification system for these recycled materials we are looking sustainability so environmental side social side and also economics of the new solutions now there are so many different tools for how to evaluate environmental impacts and social course for of different kind of solutions so we take a look of those and trying to get the understanding to our our partner companies and organization how to interpret this this kind of information and we made a model of of course of textile recycling in the first phase and we kind of make a little bit further develop our model to make more accurate estimates of the of the course of different kind of collecting sorting and recycling concepts and of course study market situation in the end of the project we continue demonstration it's a nice visual way to show and communicate about the work but since we have these business models included in we also can make quick business model trials with with our companies test quickly new kind of ways to to to make business and consumers like in our our re-looping fashion ecosystem model they are in the top consumers are one of the of the focus areas in in our work so we are making studies of consumer attitudes towards recycling and these new business models and we also direct our communication activists directly to common public in Finland and then in ecosystem kind of a dissemination part we try to to see how we can support this ecosystem building we check how we can scale up or export the potential results of of of the work and of course check what are the first future development and research needs how delicate it has been success in in taking Finland to our circle and what are our success factors we have strong involvement from companies so we are aiming for business such as making a project we have been able to involve whole value chain also charity is not just these companies and different type of organizations into our our project we are really focused on applied research to demonstration practical solutions which are close to market we have had in unfortunately also long term commitment funding agencies as well as our companies and research organizations we do very well cooperation and we all have a good trust between participants and and communicate openly within our our networks and and we have also very motivated individuals forming very innovative groups so our group is more than just the sum of the individuals and also where our project group have very optimistic view and and see this transformation of textile sector not just kind of something we need to be done but showing new opportunities finding new new business opportunities from that and also we have good connections with the different stakeholders including ministries other projects other companies education and and like I said consumers our the lucky to have website you can find information there and and since I this was a short time and and I have we have webinar presentation recorded about the lucky to project and also other Finnish activities which is available through this link I can put that on the chat box as well and and we have these webinars continuous and they are open for anyone for you to sign in and and we are planning to have five more within a coming year I tried to be quick and I maybe I was able to kind of keep my time and I'm open to answer questions now or later on uh Peter okay I'll one question quickly um are there any recommendations that you could give to Stilunia how could we build such an ecosystem here locally try to look of the success factor list so involvement of funding agencies is of course important and trying to get all necessary kind of parts of value chain involved those are maybe the most important part have open communication try to avoid competition between participants that's maybe the how we were able to have this kind of long-term development activity going on thank you very much hopefully in the future we might also see a such ecosystem built in Estonia and maybe there could be also cooperation opportunities between Finland and Estonia and the other Baltic countries too I really hope so thank you thank you uh okay since I also don't see any questions I encourage listeners that you can actually post the questions in the chat box and if you don't have currently time to get them I will try to answer forward by email the answers later but let's move on to Sini Ilmanen who will give tell her presentation about practical example from Finland yes hello thank you for the invitation for this event and thank you for great very great presentation today it's really easy to continue from here I will try to also share my screen here we go so I'm going to present today who we are and what is our role and and also our plans to support the circularity of textiles we are municipal waste company located in south-west Finland we are working or our active area is 17 municipalities and the biggest city and biggest city is turku and we have a collected post-consumer textiles since 2016 and the telekity project also started at the moment our goal is to establish a nationwide collection model well not even only collection but the model for handling post-consumer textiles and provide opportunities and support the development of the circularity of textiles also well here is in Finland but of course we are doing collaboration in in neighboring countries um already 2016 we find uh in a municipal mixed municipal waste that there there is still textiles that could be sorted out and we see we saw then that there is a there might be a possibilities on textiles so we started to with the local university here turku university of applied sciences we started to collect the textiles separately and and find and look for opportunities to handle it and how we should sort it and what you are actually doing at the moment in Estonia we are responsible on household waste and textile is one fraction on that our actions are guided with loads of regulations but also the waste hierarchy that first you should prevent waste waste creation and then you should reuse them and then recycle them and and the last one is to use it as an energy in Finland we don't really landfill any more any any of the household wastes just few percents and as uh david david already mentioned there's a EU requirement coming on 2025 that the textiles should be collected separately Finnish government has uh has uh well proposed that the collection should be started in Finland already 2023 we don't know if it's happening or is it is it going to be in in a law but that's that's a propose at the moment and we do we see us as a as a good platform for circular economy because we are kind of a neutral neutral actor in in the value chain and we are doing lots of national cooperation especially in delagatio network we have been member of delagatio since beginning and we do also international cooperation our work well as we heard today it the circularity of textile is much more than the recycling it's also it's a design and reducing and many many other things before we come to recycling but when the textile is finally rechargeable then we come in the picture and our we have three development approaches that we see that we have to develop at the same time one is this separate collection system then is a sorting and and refinement refinement plant and then of course the collaboration we see that this is a comprehensive solution as we heard today already that there's a many many different sources of textiles there is this side streams of industry there's leftovers from shops and from second hand stores and there's for example the workware but then there's this post consumer textiles from from consumers and that that as we know is maybe most difficult because of there's not there's many mixed materials and also we don't know the origin origin of the textiles but that's that we are concentrating on in this solution so we get the textiles from from consumers we collect them and and then we do the pre-shorting that the textiles some of the textiles is still going for reuse and totally waste and not re-recyclable they go into energy and then we are developing with the support of TELAKETU network as well this optical material identification as a as a part of sorting facilities and then we have invested in refiner refinement plant so this is the mechanical fiber opener and then we do collaboration with companies and there's going on lots of research that what or for which product the the open fibers could be used in Finland we have around 30 different municipal waste companies and the operational area is covered is covering the whole Finland we are we have been collecting in few years already but now we are trying to now we are negotiating with other municipal waste companies that they start the collection in the area and and they do the pre-shorting in their own area that's because we see that or we know already that the textiles is ruined really easily it's getting mold if there's any any any humid textiles or wet textiles in the containers so we are now negotiating with all the municipal waste companies that they start the collection and do the pre-shorting in the area and then they going to send send the textiles to us for our all sorting and facilities we're also doing negotiating with secondhand stores and super markets and other clothing and fashion stores that they start they could put our collection point in their facilities that we see that there's a many beneficial things on that collection is that that the container the collection container which will be inside and they going to be easy for the consumers and they are they are going to be easy well nearby the real textile streams Harry mentioned the EPR models we see it's a little bit might be a little bit problematic also because we are already building up the the system and if the EPR comes it might be that the responsibility of the textiles goes to producers but of course there are many different kind of models that we get the producers to support the the system and not not making it any any trouble on that and that I actually already already talked about so there is this model how we're going to ask municipal-based companies to to handle the textiles locally and then send it to us and we are we are trying to establish the national wide model in in few years that we would be ready in 2023 that the government is proposed someone's mic is open so please could you close it down and about the scanner or the optical material identification as David mentioned there are a few few companies of few initiatives in in Europe that is trying to find a ways to identify the materials and also red mentioned that the mono materials are most easy to recycle and we see that as well and we have this handheld scanner it's really small and it's easy to easy to take part of the manual sorting and on that way this can offer quality quality sorting for companies it's based on nir and infrared technology and now we are in a phase that we have used ganners both and we have built the algorithm and the library and we have used ganners to to share the device for partners who would like to try try it in day operations and collect openly the or share in the network the results and and see how the how the device works in in the operation so if you are interested please take contact and after it's collected sorted manually and then some of them is is also quality checked with the scanner then it's the textiles is going to this mechanical fiber opening line just showing you the basic steps of the line so there is this the sorting and even this looks that it's done technically it's it's made manually and then it's cutting there's the kilotein cutters that cuts the textiles in species then there's automated hard part removal and then there is then the fibers is going to be shredded as an open fibers and then it's ready for research or ready for companies to use in their products so this opening line is just the one part of the whole recycling chain and if it's going to mechanical recycling or chemical recycling normally in many in many cases the fiber has to be opened anyway so that that was a missing piece in Finland and maybe in Estonia and Baltics as well so we hope that we can offer and support the recycling companies who are developing this recycling recycling products so we are still looking for companies who could really make the products and use the fibers so i'm really interested on the Baltics companies who are really making products from recycled fibers and also initiatives and and and other projects that could could find the solutions i think i'm a little bit over my time already but a little bit about the schedule so the first we have going to have a pilot opening line end of end of this year beginning of next year and the capacity will be around 5000 ton a year and based on the results and experiences of the pilot line we are doing the invest investment plans for bigger bigger factory and of course then we need more volume of the textiles so maybe in the future we can be a result for the for the Estonia as well where you could send the textiles for opening of course we have to find the product where to use the open end fibers as well but at least this is the one link and if you find yourself in this picture please please take contact and uh let's continue the discussions thank you thank you Sini again for a very uh interesting presentation you have a very interesting project going on and as Sini mentioned they so you are looking so you're producing fiber and you're looking for companies organization initiatives who could use that fiber correct yes yeah we have uh different uh different organizations also companies listening today so keep in mind that you can contact Sini if you are interested in the fiber products yes thank you very much uh so we are actually quite well on time uh this now concludes our first parts of the day I thank you again to all the presenters to Red, Harry, David, Perio and Sini uh still if you have some questions please let us know when we can try to get them back to them by email and now we're going to have a break until 12 30 when we will continue with the second part of the day we will hear some presentations about different initiatives companies and best practice examples from Estonia and the second part is going to be in Estonian language so thank you again for now and see you back in around 17 minutes