Image: WhiteCycle project

Sixteen public and private European organizations are combining their scientific and industrial expertise to launch the WhiteCycle project. The four-year project aims to develop a circular method for recycling waste containing textiles made of PET. It was coordinated by Michelin and co-funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s (EU’s) research and innovation program.

This project could prevent landfilling or incineration of more than 1.8 million tons of plastic each year. Raw material from PET plastic waste could also be reused to create new products.

Participating organizations are:

  • Three industrial partners (Michelin, Mandals, KORDSA)
  • One cross-sector partnership (Inditex)
  • Two waste management companies (Synergies TLC, ESTATO)
  • One monitoring system for sorting (IRIS)
  • One biological recycling SME (Carbios)
  • One product life cycle analysis company (IPOINT)
  • One university, expert in FAIR data management (HVL)
  • Four universities, research and technology organizations (PPRIME – Université de Poitiers/CNRS, DITF, IFTH, ERASME);
  • One industry cluster (Axelera)
  • One project management consulting company (Dynergie)

The consortium will develop new processes required throughout the industrial value chain, such as:

  • Innovative sorting technologies, to enable significant increase of the PET plastic content of complex wastestreams in order to better process them;
  • A pre-treatment for recuperated PET plastic content, followed by a breakthrough recycling enzyme-basedprocess to decompose it into pure monomers in a sustainable way;
  • Repolymerization of the recycled monomers into like new plastic;
  • Fabrication and quality verification of the new products made of recycled plastic materials
  • WhiteCycle has a global budget of nearly 9.6 million euros ($11.3 million) and receives EU funding in the amount of nearly 7.1 million euros ($8.3 million). The consortium’s partners are based in five countries (France, Spain, Germany, Norway and Turkey). Coordinated by Michelin, it has an effective governance system involving a steering committee, an advisory board and a technical support committee.



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