WHAT’S INSIDE You’d think we’d all be sliding into summer on a cool, wet banana but if your schedule is anything like ours, there’s plenty of work to be done for upcoming events in the Fall! Inside you’ll find: ● A super cascade funding opportunity we spotted for you ● A Berlin fashion week event (July 3) for the newborn ALADIN project, where we’ll hint at an upcoming funding opportunity ● Our fall events including Avantex, Ecosystex, and the Fabrix final conference  We’ll be back with an events update in late August. Have a great summer!

TCBL Association is proud to be a partner in BE CIRCULAR – Local circular economy practices starting from textile waste , an interregional project led by the Sartoria Sociale of the social cooperative Al Revés (Palermo) and supported by Fondazione CON IL SUD through its call for the circular economy in Southern Italy. The project brings together three social tailoring workshops — the Sartoria Sociale in Palermo (lead partner), the social tailoring of the Soleinsieme cooperative in Reggio Calabria, and the La Matrioska textile lab in Quartu Sant'Elena, Sardinia. Together they are building a local, transparent and ethical supply chain for textile reuse and upcycling, turning discarded clothing into social, environmental and employment opportunities.  At its heart, BE CIRCULAR creates training and work-inclusion pathways for people in vulnerable situations, including migrants, women in difficulty, homeless people and former prisoners. The project also responds to a pressing concern: the growing exposure of the used-clothing and textile-waste sector to organised crime, illegal trafficking, labour exploitation and irregular disposal. By keeping the supply chain local and traceable, BE CIRCULAR links environmental sustainability directly to legality and social justice.

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● A New European Bauhaus Satellite event ● A book if you’re into wool (and the sheep that give it to us) ● Our news roundup of the latest in T&C including Italy’s new definition of “artisan”, recent studies on recycling and a request from DG Environment

Two questions ran through TCBL’s keynote at the TEX-DAN and Green-Tex final event in Budapest, 19–20 May 2026: has circular fashion really moved from pilots to practice and is the sector ready to act together? And can the way a project like TEX-DAN is conceived, run and concluded show how to operate? Why this matters Circularity in textiles and clothing is no longer a question of whether, but of how — and, increasingly, of together with whom . Europe now has an unprecedented regulatory framework pushing the sector toward durability, traceability and recyclability; the technologies exist and the market is moving. Yet most of the effort still happens in isolation: talented players, each doing excellent work, rarely in coordination. Closing that gap between individual excellence and systemic change is exactly what TEX-DAN set out to do in the Danube Region. The context: a project built as a method TEX-DAN is an EU project, co-funded under the Interreg Danube Region Programme, and the Budapest event was held to mark its conclusion. It brought together 14 partners and 6 associated partners across 11 Danube Region countries to help textile and fashion SMEs adopt sustainable technologies and embed circular-economy principles. TCBL Association — the Textile and Clothing Business Labs Association — took part as the project’s associate partner, invited by REGINNOVA NE (North-East Romania), itself a TCBL founding partner. What stands out is how it was done. TEX-DAN moved deliberately from analysis, to real-world Living-Lab pilots, to a mapping of 118 good practices, to stakeholder workshops in every country — and only then to its flagship TEX-DAN Strategy , a macro-regional framework of seven objectives and thirty measures. That Strategy now feeds eleven regional action plans, a Joint Action Plan and the new Danube Circular Textile Cluster . Conceived, run and concluded this way, the project is itself a working answer to the second question: a replicable model for how to operate ( Results ).

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● Some interesting workshop opportunities from our members ● A new Erasmus+ project to follow from Cedecs-TCBL ● Some dates to save for upcoming events - a busy summer ahead!

April 28 VLGE x TCBL challenge

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● Why is textile recycling not taking off? Would you use black ink from sewage sludge? Can AI be used to optimize seaweed for bio-leather or to make physical objects? So many questions, interesting answers and explorations in our What we’re reading section. ● The VETRINE project is approaching its end, with the final conference in Paris on June 4, and student works that give you the opportunity to vote and send one of them to Paris coming up soon!

In addition to Paris Fashion Week, an innovative atelier titled Beyond Adaptation: The Shift to Circular Practices was hosted by EIT Culture & Creativity at Atelier Néerlandais Paris on March 2 nd , 2026. More than 80 participants from across the fashion ecosystem—including designers, investors, and sustainability experts—gathered to engage in meaningful discussions and collaboration. Launch of the NEB Fashion Adaptor Program The event marked the inaugural edition of the NEB Fashion Adaptor , a ten-week training program intended to guide brands and services in transitioning toward circular models and resource-conscious practices. This initiative aims to address structural issues in the fashion industry, such as waste mitigation.

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● Your answers to our TechStyle survey will help deliver the best AI for circularity curriculum ● Read an important new study on the destruction of unsold consumer products to support the implementation of the ESPR. ● In Italy, two very different companies take responsibility for their supply chain – only one voluntarily.