The third edition of the Best Practices Report brings together 10 Best Practices published on the EU Textiles Ecosystem Platform between February and June 2026. Together, they provide practical examples from across the textile value chain, spanning raw materials and manufacturing, repair and reuse, waste valorisation, digital production and technical textiles.

The new edition illustrates the diversity of approaches supporting the transition. Several practices demonstrate how textile and leather waste can become a resource for new products and sectors through industrial symbiosis. Others explore repair and circular business models, consumer awareness, collaborative supply-chain decarbonisation, more sustainable industrial production and digitally enabled on-demand manufacturing. The report also shows how innovation and European production capabilities can contribute to the resilience and strategic autonomy of the textiles ecosystem.

The selected examples span several European countries, including Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany and Denmark, and involve a broad range of stakeholders, from SMEs and large industrial companies to non-profit organisations, research institutes and industry associations.

The following organisations and initiatives are featured in the report:

1. Turning legacy know-how into a circular business in the textile sector and beyond: the case of Pulvera
   Italian company Pulvera builds on long-standing  expertise to transform textile production scraps into fibre-based composite materials. By looking beyond conventional textile-to-textile recycling and creating applications in sectors such as furniture and automotive, the company demonstrates how industrial symbiosis can turn textile waste into new business opportunities.
2. Driving circularity and social inclusion: the case of the United Repair Centre
   United Repair Centre combines scalable B2B garment repair with an inclusive employment model. By helping brands extend the life of their products while creating employment and skills-development opportunities for people facing barriers to the labour market, it shows how environmental and social objectives can be embedded in the same circular business model.
3. Leveraging collective action to decarbonise supply chains: the Carbon Reduction Project of the European Outdoor Group
   The European Outdoor Group’s Carbon Reduction Project demonstrates the potential of pre-competitive collaboration to address emissions in global textile supply chains. Bringing European brands together around shared suppliers, the initiative provides facilities with technical support to measure emissions, develop reduction plans and implement concrete decarbonisation measures.
4. Industrial symbiosis: textile waste as a resource for furniture production
   The examples of Planq and Kvadrat Really show how textile waste can be redirected into the furniture and interior-design industries. By transforming discarded textiles into durable surfaces, panels and furniture components, these companies illustrate the potential for cross-sector collaboration to reduce reliance on virgin materials and create value from waste streams.
5. Awareness raising for circular textiles in Romania: the initiatives of Humana People to People and Viitor Plus
   In Romania, Humana People to People and Viitor Plus focus on consumer engagement in the circular transition through education, awareness campaigns and practical tools. Their initiatives encourage reuse, repair and more responsible consumption while helping citizens identify concrete opportunities to keep textiles in circulation for longer.
6. How circularity in a business model can drive product innovation: the case of MUD Jeans
   MUD Jeans embeds circularity into both product design and its business model, combining recycled cotton with its pioneering Lease-a-Jeans programme. Take-back, repair, resale and fibre recycling are used to extend product lifetimes and keep denim materials in circulation.
7. Scaling industrial textile production in Bulgaria, with attention to environmental impacts: the case of E. Miroglio
   E. Miroglio provides an example of how environmental management can be integrated into industrial-scale textile manufacturing.  With a significant manufacturing presence in Bulgaria, the company has invested in modern technologies, certified materials, traceability systems, resource efficiency, lifecycle assessment and environmental monitoring.
8. Recovery of tannery residues: industrial symbiosis models from the Italian leather value chain
   The Italian leather value chain offers long-standing examples of industrial symbiosis. Companies such as SICIT and ILSA recover collagen-rich residues from tanning processes and transform them into bio-based products, including fertilisers and biostimulants, creating value from materials that would otherwise be treated as waste.
9. Digitalisation as a lever for sustainability: the example of textile microfactories
   Textile microfactories demonstrate how digitalisation can support more local, flexible and on-demand manufacturing. Initiatives developed by research institutes and companies such as DITF Denkendorf, Rodinia Generation and OMIMAI connect digital design directly with production and shift the conventional “design-make-sell” model towards a “design-sell-make” approach, helping address overproduction and long supply chains.
10. Protection through innovation: EU strategic autonomy and the case of Sioen
    Sioen illustrates the role that technical textiles, innovation and a predominantly European production base can play in strengthening supply-chain resilience. Its vertically integrated activities serve strategic sectors including defence and security, public safety, maritime applications, energy and infrastructure, while recent initiatives also address circularity and product traceability.

Taken together, these examples show how the transition of the textiles ecosystem is increasingly moving from ambition to implementation. They demonstrate practical pathways for reducing environmental impacts, creating value from waste, developing viable circular business models, using digitalisation to rethink production, and strengthening the resilience of the European textiles ecosystem.

Each case study in the report provides further details on the approaches adopted, implementation models and results achieved, offering concrete examples that stakeholders across the textiles ecosystem can learn from and adapt to their own contexts.
The EU Textiles Ecosystem Platform will continue to identify and share new best practices, supporting knowledge exchange and encouraging stakeholders to contribute initiatives that can help advance the objectives of the Textiles Ecosystem Transition Pathway.

Read the full third edition of the Report on Best Practices here.