Photographs from the Prato district become an exhibition at the European Parliament

Enrico Venturini, NTT

 

Trafi, Next Technology, and Marini Industrie discuss textile circularity.

The exhibition was on display for a week at the European Parliament as part of the RegioGreenTex project. The photographs capture the relationship between textile manufacturing tradition and industrial innovation. And at the final event of the European Next Technology project, Tecnotessile also presented the results of the five “Greentex Hubs”.

Twenty-seven prints narrate the relationship between textile tradition and industrial innovation, highlighting the manual labour that still characterises some manufacturing processes today, but also demonstrating how daily life is changing with the arrival of new machinery in factories. A story told through hands, spaces, lights, connections, and above all, people. The photographic exhibition related to the RegioGreenTex project will remain open until today at the European Parliament in Brussels. This project, as part of the European Green Deal, has promoted collaboration, research, and development in the textile industry between the four main sectors of society: manufacturing, public institutions, and research institutes. The aim is to make the textile supply chain circular throughout the European Union.

In the Prato district, the European project was participated in by the national research company Next Technology Tecnotessile and the two manufacturing companies Trafi Creatività Tessile and Marini Industrie. The latter two were also the venues for the exhibition, curated by photographer Francesco Pacifici. Trafi immortalised a machine located in the part of the company that was flooded in November 2023, illustrating the threads that intertwine to create the fabric. Marini Industrie, on the other hand, depicted the district’s quality control and manual know-how. The other presses involved the rest of the project’s regions, spread across Europe. The exhibition will also be held in Prato in the coming months, and a catalogue containing additional photographs taken at the companies has been released.
“It’s a pleasure and an honour to have been featured in this project,” explain Fabio Giusti, Nicolò Coffaro, and Daniele Luconi of Trafi Creatività Tessile. “This exhibition has allowed us to become known all the way to Brussels. A concrete project that has laid the foundation for innovation, synergies, and research. Now we look forward to the exhibition in Prato so we can share it with the entire district.”

“This experience has given us the opportunity to showcase the work we’re doing on the innovation front. The dialogue between tradition and technology is what allows us today to develop more advanced and sustainable textile treatments without losing the identity of the materials,” says Francesco Marini, Head of Product Development and Innovation at Marini Industrie Spa. “Seeing the images of our daily work exhibited in Brussels was important because it conveys a sense of the journey: innovation doesn’t come from nothing; it comes from who we are every day.”

Next Technology Tecnotessile worked on understanding the needs and possibilities for starting a circular economy in different parts of Europe, considering how developed each area is. Specifically, it focused on the idea of ​​creating five regional textile recycling hubs, in line with the ReHubs Europe initiative, consistent with the European Union’s textile strategy and the needs of SMEs. This process culminated in the final event in Brussels, attended by Matteo Lepri and Enrico Venturini degli Esposti. The latter presented the results of the “Greentex Hubs” to a distinguished audience. “We started with the premise of the need to categorise the entire mass of recyclable material arriving in the district,” they explain. “It’s a way to understand quantities and waste. These numbers then allow us to create standards for large-scale recycling. Then we worked on recyclability indices and developed a system capable of providing answers about post-consumer and post-industrial textile waste: for each type, we can essentially explain what kind of use that waste could have.”

 

SBD Comunicazione