Deutsche Telekom Initiates Circular Economy for Smart Textile Recycling with Partners
- Digitization and textile recycling for more
climate protection
- Deutsche Telekom saves 35.7 tons of CO2
emissions with 2380 kg of recycled textiles
- Deutsche Telekom receives TUI Green IT Award for
smart textile recycling
Deutsche Telekom has built
an ecosystem that covers the entire textile recycling process, including
intelligent control of container fill levels, re-use and recycling. This makes
Deutsche Telekom both a pioneer and a digital trailblazer in building a textile
circular economy. Smart textile recycling containers help to reduce material
consumption and CO2 emissions in the production of textiles. And together with
partners Remondis and the Boer Group, new fibers can be produced from old
workwear. The intelligent collection containers also reduce fuel consumption
and CO2 emissions by optimizing transport routes.
Deutsche Telekom initiative pays off on the EU's Green Deal
As part of the European Union's Green Deal, the requirements for recycling old textiles must be
met by 2025. Returning these textiles requires a separate collection system. In
the past, Deutsche Telekom employees disposed of their old work clothes
themselves. However, all logos had to be removed beforehand. As a result, the
cut-up clothing was unusable and, according to the waste directive, had to be
disposed of in the residual waste. Now Deutsche Telekom is giving workwear a
second chance through intelligent textile recycling.
Deutsche Telekom equips textile collection containers with fill level sensors.
These sensors measure and send the current fill level to the cloud via Deutsche Telekom's NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) machine and
sensor network. Here, the data is
processed and clearly displayed in an online portal. This way, Remondis knows when a container is
full and is due to be emptied. The intelligent solution avoids unnecessary fill
level checks and optimizes the collection cycles of the textile containers. The Boer Group then recycles the
collected textiles into fibers in a multi-stage process.
Digital climate protection: 2380 kg of textiles recycled equals 35.7 tons
less CO2
In addition to work clothes Deutsche Telekom has been collecting discarded
jeans in smart textile containers since December 2021. 2380 kg of textiles have
been recycled since then. This corresponds to 15.71 million liters of water
saved and 35.7 tons less CO2 emissions. Currently, recycling containers for
workwear are located outside Deutsche Telekom sites in Bonn, Cologne, Bochum
and Berlin. Additionally, 25 smart textile garbage cans are located in
the office buildings in Bonn, Cologne, Leipzig, Saarbrücken, Frankfurt and
Chemnitz. The goal is to roll out recycling facilities across all Deutsche
Telekom sites in Germany.
"Our intelligent recycling processes support the circular economy by
returning valuable textile resources again and again. This can also be
transferred to other industries, such as airlines, hotels, healthcare, trade or
in the public sector," says Melanie Kubin-Hardewig, Vice President Group Corporate Responsibility at Deutsche Telekom. "Climate protection and the circular economy
are central topics of our corporate responsibility strategy. We drive both
internally and also enable our customers to improve their ecological footprint
through our products and solutions."
For its smart textile recycling initiative Deutsche Telekom has received the TUI Green IT Award in
the "Progress" category .
At least 10,000 liters of
water are needed to produce one kilo of cotton. Recycled cotton, on the other
hand, saves two-thirds of the water consumption and 15 kilograms of CO2. The
production of a new pair of jeans emits an average of 35 kilograms of CO2.
Source: Deutsche Telekom media announcement
