Pois Chiche
Setting the sustainability roadmap for a restaurant
Discover how we helped Pois Chiche prioritise and act on their sustainability intentions.
Connecting surplus textiles with organizations that need it
The textile industry generates vast amounts of waste each year, yet valuable materials often end up downcycled or discarded due to a lack of connection between those who produce waste and those who can give it a second life. While recyclers, upcyclers, and designers are eager to work with post-consumer and post-industrial textiles, they struggle to access reliable sources that meet their specific needs.
At Quest, we set out to tackle this disconnect. The ambition behind Waste Wizard was not to create another marketplace, but to demonstrate how technology and collaboration can enable a circular flow of materials. Our goal was to build a demonstrator that shows how waste can become a resource when the right players are linked efficiently and transparently.
Strengthening textile circularity in Europe's regions
RegioGreenTex is a European initiative funded under the Interregional Innovation Investment (I3) Instrument, designed to accelerate the transition toward a circular and resilient textile ecosystem across Europe. Bringing together regional clusters, research centers, SMEs, and policy actors, the project aims to strengthen regional textile value chains by connecting waste holders, sorters, recyclers, and designers to turn textile waste into new resources. Within this framework, Quest contributed through projects like The Circular Garment and The Waste Wizard which demonstrate how collaboration, innovation, and design can make textile circularity both achievable and scalable.
Building and designing the Waste Wizard
The Waste Wizard is a joint project of Quest, Ariadne Innovation, OVAM (Public Waste Agency of Flanders), and RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden). To bring Waste Wizard to life, we combined systems thinking with user-centred design. The process began with defining a clear ambition: to create a demonstrator that bridges the gap between waste holders and recyclers through an intuitive, transparent platform. We mapped the ecosystem of stakeholders, explored their needs and constraints, and translated these insights into user flows and interface prototypes.
Through iterative testing, we refined the platform’s matchmaking logic and interaction design, ensuring that functionality met the real-world needs of businesses handling textile waste. Throughout the project, we worked closely with industry partners to validate assumptions and capture learnings that could inform future development.
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Define ambition & scope
We clarified what the demonstrator should achieve (matching, contact facilitation, material types, user flows).
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Stakeholder mapping & alignment:
We identified waste-holders, recyclers/upcyclers/designers, platform requirements, value flows as well as defined clear use cases.
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Define key functionalities and features
We ensured all required features met the needs of key stakeholders and prioritised functionalities that would enable full transparency. Key features included: Filtering based on proximity and complexity; splitting and bundling; reviews and ratings system; legal advice; alerts
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Prototype design sprint
We built mock-ups of the platform, user journeys and the matchmaking logic.
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Research the possibility of AI
Our partner OVAM deep dived into how matchmaking could be facilitated and improved using artificial intelligence via a large language model.
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Roadmap for the future commercialisation
We investigated potential avenues for commercialisation and business models that would enable the Waste Wizard to be developed in the near future. We are now seeking further investment and subsidies to continue this important work and to develop the actual tool.
Turning circularity into practice
The Waste Wizard was developed as a matchmaking demonstrator platform connecting companies with surplus textiles to recyclers and designers who can transform them into new products via reuse. The focus was on testing functionality, usability, and the potential for scaling it in a commercial product.
The platform allows users to register material streams, define their characteristics, and discover potential partners based on type, quantity, and condition. Through AI, potential matches are highlighted and the user can connect with the most appealing option. Once a match is made, a final page with a simple popup contact box facilitates direct exchange between parties—keeping the user experience intuitive while ensuring the connection leads to real-world collaboration.
Quest guided the process from concept to prototype: mapping stakeholder needs, designing the user journey, and shaping the system architecture. The result was a demonstrator that visualizes how digital tools can activate circular ecosystems across the textile value chain.
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From inter-regional collaboration to transformation
The Waste Wizard demonstrator successfully proved that intelligent matchmaking can turn fragmented waste streams into opportunities for collaboration, illustrating how digital solutions can close material loops. Beyond the technical outcome, the project generated valuable insights on user behavior, needs and expectations, platform logic, and data requirements for scaling. It offered a tangible showcase of what a circular textile infrastructure could look like: transparent, efficient, and collaborative.
By translating a complex challenge into a working demonstrator, Quest created both a learning tool and a strategic blueprint for future circular platforms, showing that waste, when reimagined, can become the foundation for innovation.
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