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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he has made on the implementation of the Automatic-sorting for Circularity in Textiles UK pilot; what funding he has provided to that pilot; and what safeguards are in place to ensure that materials processed through that scheme are retained for domestic reprocessing.

The total cost of the Autosort for Circular Textiles Innovation Demonstrator was £4,128,228, with nearly £1.5 million of funding provided by industry and private investors.

One of the project’s aims was to ensure that the processed material was retained through domestic reprocessing. UK Fashion and Textile served as the lead partner, with supporting the UK textile manufacturing sector as one of their key objectives.

In addition, Innovate UK provided robust monitoring throughout the project to ensure it remained within its original scope, which we can confirm it did.

Although the funding phase has concluded, we continue to support this project and its partners to generate economic value that can be retained within the UK.

This Government is committed to transitioning towards a circular economy where resources are kept in use for longer and waste is designed out. The Government has convened a Circular Economy Taskforce of experts to help develop the first ever Circular Economy Strategy for England, which we plan to publish for consultation in the coming autumn. The Circular Economy Taskforce will initially focus on six sectors that have the greatest potential to grow the economy: textiles; agri-food; built environment; chemicals and plastics; electrical and electronic equipment; and transport. The Circular Economy Taskforce will assess what interventions may be needed across the textiles sector.