The Covid-19 outbreak has led to a health and economic crisis, which is putting textile workers at risk of infection at the workplace and generating increasing amounts of waste globally due to the usage of disposable, single-use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
With the aim of ensuring the health and well-being of employees and management at their workplace during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, strict International Labour Organization (ILO) COVID-19-response workplace health and safety (WHS) standards will be established. To cope with the pandemic situation, the establishment of tailored health and safety measures are important to avoid the spread of the virus at the workplace and to ensure that the work can be performed in a safe environment that is not exposing the workers to a risk of infection. The participating project partner companies will enter a strategic partnership, to collaboratively build more localized, efficient supply chains around healthcare needs and the implementation of precautionary measures against spreading of the novel coronavirus for about 25.000 employees in total at their workplace.
Due to the usage of disposable, single-use PPE, the Covid-19 health crisis is putting further pressure on the textile industry’s problems of heavily relying on the extraction of finite primary resources and generating increasing amounts of waste globally. Against this background, this projects’ target is to tackle the wasteful nature of current available PPE for medical and non-medical use by introducing sustainable, biodegradable alternatives, made from locally sourced natural materials, biobased synthetics, and non-harmful finishing applications for medical and non-medical purposes. An competence centre will be established, dedicated to the training of workforce, testing and development of materials, products and finishing applications to expand further into the PPE market segment, thus preserving the workforce and creating new job opportunities. The so far untapped possibility of embedding strategies for the introduction of biodegradable PPE offers great potential to target new revenue streams and achieving economic growth while securing resource supply and the creation of circular economy based on regenerative systems in which resource input, waste and emission are minimized or eliminated. Through circularity practices, project partner suppliers reconcile growth with sustainability transition, ultimately contributing to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Furthermore, the project targets activities to anchor know-how with the Indonesian Textile Association and its members to enhance competitiveness and reset industry thinking by showcasing innovative circular business practices and opportunities to alleviate the current supply issues as well as forming educational partnerships with two local universities.
This Public-Private-Partnership project, co-funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), has been conceptualized and will be fully implemented by an expert team of Closed Loop Fashion.
