Reconciling the textile industry and the environment is now the objective of operators in this strategic sector in Tunisia, supported by foreign partners.
With this in mind, the third component of the project “Intex-Tunisia-Innovative business practices and economic models in the textile value chain”, a project funded by the European Union (EU) with the support of the United Nations Environment (UNEP) and implemented by the International Center for Environmental Technologies of Tunis (CITET), has just started.
It targets the strengthening of skills and support for the implementation of a process for calculating the environmental footprints of products, an initiative of the European Commission that aims to establish a system for comparing the environmental performance of products on the basis of a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology.
Once the objectives of this component of the project have been achieved, Tunisian Textiliens will become able to calculate the environmental footprint of products to see their overall environmental impact and thus provide reliable and comparable information on products and promote a single market for ecological goods. within the EU.
This project is very interesting for the textile industry in Tunisia, according to CITET, because it supports circular economy initiatives.
It is a common language in terms of environmental performance that can encourage collaboration, all along the value chain, and it is also a tool that makes it possible to optimize the design of a product from an environmental, as we read on the CITET page.
The first two components of the project focused on coaching and training for the benefit of the representatives of the beneficiary companies of the project relating to the PEF approach and also on diagnostic missions for the benefit of several beneficiary companies of the project through expert visits. UNEP and consultants from CITET, the Tunisian Textile-Clothing Federation (FTTH), the Textile Technical Center (CETTEX), and the Monastir-El Fejja competitiveness cluster (MFC pole Monastir).
Indeed, the project “innovative business practices and economic models in the textile value chain” which spans a period from October 2021 to June 2023, aims to adopt eco-friendly approaches in Tunisia. – innovation and the environmental footprint of products in the textile sector in 3 African countries (Tunisia, Kenya, and South Africa).
The textile-clothing industry in Tunisia remains the leading manufacturing sector in terms of jobs (about 176,464 jobs) and number of companies with 1,822 companies established in Tunisia.
The sector takes advantage of the advantages of proximity to the European market and also of the quality of production and the speed of dispatch.
In addition, textile-clothing exports to the European Union increased during the first quarter of 2022 compared to 2021, for a value of 572.7 million euros, according to CETTEX.
Tunisia, ninth supplier of the European Union (EU) in clothing is able to increase the value of its exports in this field by more than 25% towards this group to reach 2300 million euros, by the end of this year, according to a CETTEX analysis, published on May 23, 2022.
