Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans his Department has to allocate funding to (a) research and development in sustainable fabrics and (b) fabric recycling facilities in the UK.

Through the WRAP-administered Resources Action Fund we made £1.5 million available for small scale capital grants of between £20,000 to £170,000 to encourage innovation and support the development of textile reuse and recycling. Funds have been allocated to organisations in England to invest in facilities to improve the reprocessing of textiles waste, including recycling of waste textiles to create recycled fibres for manufacturers.

With backing from Defra, £30 million of research funding (of which £22.5 million is Government investment) has been allocated through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to establish five circular economy research centres. £4.5 million has been allocated to a centre focused on sustainable textiles. The Interdisciplinary Textiles Circularity Centre, led by the Royal College of Art, aims to reduce our reliance on imported clothing materials by leading research to turn post-consumer textiles and household waste into renewable materials for use in textiles products. This programme will harness academic excellence and industry expertise to deliver for the UK.