EU Practices in Green Textiles: from Focused Education to Circular Economy

ended

Textile industry is a priority for sustainability due to its high impact on environment. Although textiles are not on top of the global ecological agenda as compared with carbon footprint or global warming, they are among the worst pressure categories in these effects. The EU Commission includes the EU Textile Strategy into the Circular Economy Action Plan setting the goals for the future. Expertise in green textiles comes from academics and initiatives in EU universities. Although building awareness of environmental sustainability in HEIs, many countries like Russia are behind the EU in infusing sustainability in university agenda and engineering curricula. The focus on green transformations and circular economy in textile engineering programs is still poor. The module objective is to offer courses on European green deal and circular economy to engineering students and scientists so they can expand their expertise in both the environmental and social impacts of the textile industry and create green textiles in line with sustainable development goals as their European colleagues do. The module intends to add the EU dimension to the textile engineering degree programs, which are mostly non-EU oriented in Russia. The module will be implemented in Kazan National Research Technological University, the leader in chemical engineering in Russia. The region of Tatarstan where the university is located has the highest innovative potential in the country. The module will be proposed to Bachelor’s students in textile engineering which gives opportunities for green enterprises. Engaging textile businesses, policy makers, schoolchildren and other HEIs will give a greater visibility to the module. The interdisciplinary project team will include PhDs and professors with vast experience in EU studies: a specialist in textile engineering, an educationalist, and engineers. The project participants are skilled in intercultural communication, math modelling, and internationalization.