The working group of the European textile care association ETSA for innovation and research met in Cologne. Board member Nikola Kašparová participated in the meeting on behalf of APaČ.
The working group was held on May 7 and 8 under the auspices of the ALSCO company, in which the newly elected president of ETSA, Thomas Neyers, acts as CEO. It was about the form of the new Horizon Europe program (the framework program of the European Union for research and innovation for the period 2021-2027) for our field. It is created in cooperation with the European textile association EURATEX and covers the following topics:
- Competitive sustainable production of new and safe materials – focused on workwear and healthcare
- Digital circular supply models
- Sustainability and clean processes in production
The submission of the project will take place in the first quarter of 2025. It will involve an allocation of EUR 60 million.
The guests present from the ranks of ETSA members and other experts from the textile care sector also addressed the published research led by Prof. Katie Laird, who compared the occurrence of the microbe in domestic and industrial tunnel washing machines. The results showed the extreme occurrence of microorganisms in domestic washing machines and their significant transfer back to human skin, which points to the necessity of washing medical and work textiles in industrial laundries, among other things, due to the threat of increased resistance to antibiotics, which is already a global problem.
Also on the agenda of the meeting was the issue of PFAS (a group of thousands of synthetic chemicals that are widely used throughout society and found in the environment). The Belgian Textile Care Association is in the process of finding a partner university to research the degradation of PFAS in laundries’ wastewater and build the first model using filters along with activated carbon and foam that will bind PFAS.
These and other topics will be further developed at the meeting of national associations to be held in June in Berlin.
Czech Association for Textile care
Nikola Kašparová
