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Regions for Green Textiles – known as RegioGreenTex – is a partnership initiative aiming at mapping and reducing the pitfalls that currently exist in the implementation of a circular economy model within the textile ecosystem across the EU. How?
RegioGreenTex brings together 43 partners from 11 European regions, and at Quest Impact Design Studio we are incredibly proud to be one of the 24 SMEs pioneering innovative solutions to recycle textile waste.
Together, the SMEs cover various value chain segments of circular textiles (sorting, recycling from material to fiber, removal of contaminants, processing of recycled fibers into new textile materials) and provide concrete solutions to EU value chain bottlenecks but also seize upon market opportunities.
At Quest Studio, our focus is on driving innovation and R&D efforts toward developing circular value chains for clothing, with a particular emphasis on designing from discarded textiles. Our team of experts is dedicated to developing business models and tools that can help the textile industry adopt more sustainable design processes. We’re committed to keeping production, communication, and cost/business models in mind to ensure that our solutions are scalable and market-ready. Ultimately, our main goal is to increase the availability of better choices for the planet and people, showcasing a new normal in fashion design and production that is both sustainable and adaptable to large scale.
Together with OVAM, Ellie.Connect, and Textile at RISE, we’re creating a new tool that will boost efficiency in post-consumer and post-production textile waste, ensuring that waste is revalorized into reuse, remanufacturing, or as a last resort into recycling. We call it the Waste Wizard.
RegioGreenTex promotes the collaboration in research and development between 43 partners from the four major sectors of society – industry, government, research institutes, and the public – for the textile industry. Partners come from 11 regions in 8 European countries:
This three-year project that kicked off last February will contribute to the EU Green Deal objectives of reducing carbon footprint, energy and water consumption by reshoring textile production in Europe and making the EU textile value chain more competitive and resilient.
RegioGreenTex is supported by the European Commission through the Interregional Innovation Investments Instrument and will be coordinated by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA).
As part of the European Regional and Development Fund (ERDF), the initiative aims to support interregional innovation projects in their commercialization and scale-up phases, giving them the tools to bring their project to the investment level. This instrument focuses on strengthening economic cohesion in the EU by helping businesses work with innovation actors in other regions.
Launched in 2022, Textile Recycling Excellence launched with the ambition to create a paradigm shift from household textile waste into a closed-loop textile process.
By involving major players across the whole fashion value chain, T-Rex aims to demonstrate that a new ecosystem approach, with harmonized methods and quality criteria, can lead to a better understanding of current textile waste and therefore better up-cycling rates into new garments.
As Quest supported a few T-Rex partners in the past, (Fashion For Good, Aalto University, Adidas, Infinited Fiber Company, we learned how to deliver quality work involving the opinions of several stakeholders.
Given our research and experience in the fashion space, T-Rex came to us for our Digital Design expertise as we understood what T-Rex audiences would gravitate toward. This brought the industry and audience expertise that we needed to support them in the following challenges:
Create an impact-driven brand with appealing logos and powerful brand experiences that evoke emotions to inspire.
As this project was meant to support T-rex and all its founding partners through the kick-off and the next three years of this EU-wide project, we knew that both the logo and visual identity needed to make a mark. As for the website launch, we had previously worked with our partner, Fashion For Good, on making a website template for future consortium projects which meant a faster turnaround for our client and additional time to fully focus on branding!
We knew that this project – and brand – has a vast array of audiences across the fashion industry and beyond: brands, (re)manufacturers, textile waste sorters and collectors, consumers, journalists, policymakers, and universities/research institutes. That’s why we needed to build a globally known brand, that could become the recognizable logo for the EU’s circular textile revolution.
To do so, we included as many consortium members to co-create an experience and brand that we have proudly seen spread in the press and T-Rex has proudly seen accelerate the engagement from brands to transform the fashion system.
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As an international production company, the biggest challenge for our client was to get a clear overview of their current positive and negative impacts. Sustainability initiatives were scattered across different locations and project ownership was divided over multiple departments and employees. This made it very challenging for management to align initiatives, communicate about the company’s sustainability or improve their impact. So our goals for this project were to:
The clear overview of impact initiatives enabled the company to start communicating about their impact. They integrated a sustainability page into their website, briefed internal stakeholders on their ambitions and communicated their positive and negative impact transparently. In addition, the impact scan gave them a framework and clear steps to improve their positive impact. They started to measure and report more inputs and outputs and trained employees on sustainable practices.
Montea is a stock-listed developing investor in logistics real estate. Their sustainability manager approached Quest because Montea wanted to publish its first impact report and they needed someone to help them create a sound reporting framework. We accepted the challenge because we saw a very strong ambition and long-term strategy focused on driving real positive change.
For us, writing an impact report is more about pushing our customers to be as transparent and to-the-point as possible than it is about the actual writing. We build a solid structure for the report, taking into account reporting frameworks like GRI and EPRA. The results:
Even if sustainability reporting is becoming a standard in the industry, we observe huge differences in the quality and transparency of companies’ communication. We lack quantified targets and detailed action plans for some players. Although this can be explained by the size of the structures, efforts still need to be made. Especially, most companies lack a tangible action plan clearly stating the way forward. Our view is that Montea stands out in that regard.
– Real Estate Sector Note: Logistics, Bank Degroof Petercam
What we particularly liked is that Montea allowed us to make a clear statement on CO2-neutrality in this report. As of 2021, Montea’s operations are made CO2-neutral through compensation. It would have been very easy for them to boast about this achievement just like a lot of other companies do. Instead, we put things into perspective by comparing the footprint of their operations to the footprint of their portfolio. By doing so, we made clear that Montea acknowledges it still has a long way to go, but that it also has the ambition and a verified roadmap to tackle that challenge.
Onbetaalbaar is a Belgian think tank and interior design firm with a strong focus on re-use, circularity, and local collaboration. They create unique interiors and furniture pieces with reused or recycled materials, but for them, the most important element of an interior is the people who will live in it. Onbetaalbaar has a way of reflecting the personality and soul of a person in their designs to make each one unique, they call this emotional materialism.
After a kick-off meeting, we immediately started interviewing all relevant internal and external interviewees. We interviewed all employees to understand their vision of the future of Onbetaalbaar and how they see their roles changing over time. We also uncovered some points of tension, interesting growth opportunities, and untapped skills. During the interviews with external stakeholders, we were able to capture the way Onbetaalbaar is perceived by clients and partners. We gained insight into their frustrations and delights, and how they see the company evolving in the future. By combining these insights with our extensive market research, we got a clear picture of the current and possible future states of the company.
Together with the team of Onbetaalbaar, we co-created their new business model and positioning, as well as a clear vision for the future and how to transition towards this intended future.
During these workshops we tackled:
To make the results of this project very actionable and maximize the chances of implementation, all outcomes and actions were summarized in an extensive roadmap. We prioritized which changes and projects should be implemented first, added deadlines, and gave responsibilities to specific team members. Some of the projects that are being implemented now are listed below.
On an organizational level:
From a business model perspective:
From an impact perspective:
modulyss operates in a highly competitive market with players like Interface and Desso (Tarkett) who already made great sustainability achievements and commitments. With sustainability gaining massive importance in the construction business, our goal was to devise an impact strategy that positioned modulyss as one of the key sustainability leaders in the space.
We started with a thorough analysis of the market and compared modulyss’ major competitors based on 12 different criteria. We then compared the competitors’ performance with modulyss’ achievements to identify gaps and potential opportunities.
As a result, we launched the Limit Your Footprint Programme, a great way for modulyss’ customers to take their responsibility and limit the environmental footprint of a project without having to compromise on quality or design possibilities at all. The Programme can be fully tailored to anyone’s needs, ambitions and budget and will allow their customers to buy carpet tiles that:
We made a video and brochure to explain what the Limit Your Footprint Programme is all about.
Next to the Limit Your Footprint Programme, we also came up with a strong sustainability tagline to reinforce modulyss’ position: Squares can be circular too.