Ecotextyle, a European initiative to educate about product environmental footprints on the footwear and textile production

Organisations from six different countries will work together on this transnational project that will take place from the 01/10/2017 to the 30/09/2019 and focused on training those working on the footwear and textile sector on sustainable productions.
The Spanish city of Arnedo will host from the 31/01/2018 to the 03/02/2018 the first transnational meeting of this project funded under the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission. 14 professionals from the footwear, textile and education sector will meet together on this event in order to start to work on the project training materials and develop their content. “Ecotextyle: Vocational Education and Training on Product Environmental Management for the Footwear and Textile Sector", is a 24-month partnership at European level coordinated by the Centro Tecnológico del Calzado de La Rioja (CTCR) with the cooperation of the social company from Arnedo Neo Sapiens, BATTI (Bulgaria), Universita Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) (Italy), Institute of Leather Industry in Lodz (IPS) (Poland), Zavod IRCUO (Slovenia) and SATRA Technology Centre (United Kingdom).

This development of innovation project aims to gather organisations working on the development of programmes to train and educate on product environmental footprints (PEF) on the footwear sector and the production of textile complements related to it. According to this, the main objective of this partnership will be to establish the appropriate training within SMEs or training centres to be able to implement the PEF methodology, in line with the future European policies. The idea is to work together and exchange good practices related to the training of those responsible of the product environmental management inside their SMEs and to provide them the curricular skills and competences needed for an appropriate development of their professional profiles (at local or international level).

To achieve this, partner organisations will create an online training platform and face-to-face workshops on different languages dealing with issues such as product life cycle analysis, ecodesign, environmental footprints, environmental labelling, environmental product declaration, etc. combining both, formal and non formal methodologies. Thanks to all of this, “Ecotextyle” will be able to develop self assessment and training tools that could provide all the skills needed and certificate at the same time the qualifications demanded on the footwear sector for both, environmental sustainable products and producers.

Completed the second transnational meeting of Ecotextyle
The partner organisations of Ecotextyle met from the 12/06/2018 to the 15/06/2018 in Kettering (UK) in order to continue its work on this project focused on the training of those working to promote the implementation of sustainable production on the footwear and textile sector.
SATRA, the British partner of the project, was responsible of hosting the second transnational meeting of Ecotextyle that met together representatives of all the project partners. The meeting had as objective to work on the learning materials that are being created and check the first draft of their content. Using cooperative methods and brain storming, partners contributed to the improvement of the intellectual outputs composed and agreed the structure and technical aspects of the tool that will contain them and available in autumn 2018: an online training platform and face to face workshops to train those professionals and students interested on the sustainable development of products on the footwear and textile sector. The activity allowed also its attendees to talk about the project future steps and visit the facilities of SATRA as hosting organisation.
Ecotextyle is a 24-month project funded under the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission coordinated by the Centro Tecnológico del Calzado de La Rioja (CTCR) with the cooperation of the social company from Arnedo Neo Sapiens, BATTI (Bulgaria), Universita Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) (Italy), Institute of Leather Industry in Lodz (IPS) (Poland), Zavod IRCUO (Slovenia) and SATRA Technology Centre (United Kingdom). The initiative aims to gather organisations working on the design of programmes to train and educate on product environmental footprints (PEF) on the footwear sector and the production of textile complements related to it. Its objective is to establish the appropriate training within SMEs or training centres to be able to implement the PEF methodology, in line with the future European policies by providing their staff the curricular skills and competences needed for an appropriate development of their professional profiles. In order to follow the activities of this project online, you can join its Facebook page, website (www.ecotextyle.eu) and get to know or contact the partner organisation in your country (battinnovation@gmail.com)