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While aiming to create methods for fibre recycling, the question of colours in waste textiles is also in focus; whether the colour should be kept or should be removed while recycling textile fibre. More knowledge is needed for colour management in a circular economy approach.

The research included the use of different dye types in a cotton dyeing process, the process for decolourizing and the results. Two reactive dyes, two direct dyes and one vat dye were used in the study. Four chemical treatment sequences were used to evaluate colour removal from the dyed cotton fabrics, namely, HCE-A, HCE-P-A, HCE-Z-P-A and HCE-Y-A.

The objective was to evaluate how different chemical refining sequences remove colour from direct, reactive and vat dyed cotton fabrics, and how they influence the specific cellulose properties. Dyeing methods and the used refining sequences influence the degree of colour removal. The highest achieved final brightness of refined cotton materials were between 71 and 91 per cent ISO brightness, depending on the dyeing method used.

Only cotton fibre and three different colour types were tested.

With cotton waste, it appears to be easier to remove the colour than to retain it, especially if the textile contains polyester residues, which are desired to be removed in the textile refining stage.

Colour management in the CE context is an important new track to study in the context of the increasing amount of textile waste used as a raw material.

The paper aims to investigate the comfort-related performances of an innovative solar shading solution based on a new composite patented material that consists of a cement-based matrix coupled with a stretchable three-dimensional textile. The paper’s aim is, through a performance-based generative design approach, to develop a high-performance static shading system able to guarantee adequate daylit spaces, a connection with the outdoors and a glare-free environment in the view of a holistic and occupant-centric daylight assessment.

The paper describes the design and simulation process of a complex static shading system for digital manufacturing purposes. Initially, the optical material properties were characterized to calibrate radiance-based simulations. The developed models were then implemented in a multi-objective genetic optimization algorithm to improve the shading geometries, and their performance was assessed and compared with traditional external louvres and overhangs.

The system developed demonstrates, for a reference office space located in Milan (Italy), the potential of increasing useful daylight illuminance by 35% with a reduced glare of up to 70%–80% while providing better uniformity and connection with the outdoors as a result of a topological optimization of the shape and position of the openings.

The paper presents the innovative nature of a new composite material that, coupled with the proposed performance-based optimization process, enables the fabrication of optimized shading/cladding surfaces with complex geometries whose formability does not require ad hoc formworks, making the process fast and economic.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of sports sponsorship on brand equity using two managerially related outcomes: price premium and market share.

This study uses a best–worst discrete choice experiment (BWDCE) and compares the outcome with that of the purchase intention scale, an established probabilistic measure of purchase intention. The total sample consists of 409 fans of three soccer teams sponsored by three different competing brands: Nike, Adidas and Puma.

With sports sponsorship, fans were willing to pay more for the sponsor’s product, with the sponsoring brand obtaining the highest market share. Prominent brands generally performed better than less prominent brands. The best–worst scaling method was also 35% more accurate in predicting brand choice than a purchase intention scale.

Future research could use the same method to study other types of sponsors, such as title sponsors or other product categories.

Sponsorship managers can use this methodology to assess the return on investment in sponsorship engagement.

Prior sponsorship studies on brand equity tend to ignore market share or fans’ willingness to pay a price premium for a sponsor’s goods and services. However, these two measures are crucial in assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship. This study demonstrates how to conduct such an assessment using the BWDCE method. It provides a clearer picture of sponsorship in terms of its economic value, which is more managerially useful.

During the last 20 years trade between Korea and Mexico has increased steadily, reaching $2.8 billion in 2003. This trade expansion will be further accelerated with the increase in intra-industry trade in the future. Mexico's chronic trade deficit against Korea, which is attributed to Korea's increasing investment in Mexico, has rather contributed to Mexico's exports to the American region.

As Mexico expands its FTA networks, Korean companies are having difficulties in accessing the Mexican market. Considering this situation and the economic benefits of a Korea-Mexico FTA for both countries, we should first expand cooperation between private sectors, which is expected to facilitate a formal discussion on the Korea-Mexico FTA.

The study aimed to clarify differences in fabric hand perceptions among Japanese and Chinese participants and implement online shopping strategies that enable consumers to easily recognize fabric texture.

Forty (20 Japanese and 20 Chinese) participants knowledgeable about clothing and fabric were recruited. Participants evaluated fabric by sight and touch in a visuotactile experiment (VTE). The stimulus material comprised 39 fabric samples representing a broad range of fabric attributes (7 fibers, 5 weaving/knitting techniques and 3 yarn thicknesses and density). A Mann–Whitney U test and a factor analysis were conducted to determine differences in responses for the different fabric variables.

The fabric hand perceptions factors were similar between both groups. Japanese participants showed a stronger preference for fabrics that felt wet. Japanese participants’ fabric hand perceptions had a 3-factor structure, while Chinese participants had a 2-factor structure. Chinese participants regarded “crisp” as perceptually and linguistically equivalent to “stretchy.”

The study’s findings suggest that Chinese people have stronger preferences in fabrics than Japanese people do. Japanese people evaluate fabric hand in a more nuanced manner than Chinese individuals, including discerning different fabric attributes, such as fiber and yarn thickness and density. Thus, nationality may influence fabric hand perceptions more than fabric knowledge does. Specifically, in evaluating “crispness,” the results required further analysis because differences in nationality may have affected evaluations regarding perception and linguistic perspectives. The findings provide design guidelines for implementing online shopping strategies adapted to each participant group.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key aspects of business model development for sustainable apparel consumption, as actors show an increasing interest in product‒service systems. This purpose should be seen from a retailers’ perspective so as to develop sustainable solutions for long-term survival in the apparel industry when meeting consumer preferences for fashion as well as an increasing interest in consuming less. Further, this is from a perspective in an economy where sharing and circularity are potential drivers for changing consumer patterns.

The study is based on the apparel retailer Houdini Sportswear and its business model development from a traditional model of selling sportswear to a more future-oriented model where sustainability is more salient. The data for analysis were collected through interviews with employees within the studied company. The interviews have been guided by overarching themes covering relevant areas of interest for this study.

Overall, the paper shows how sustainability can be included in strategic development, from product idea, product development, production and sales/rental to repair, reuse and finally recycling. The paper also highlights potential obstacles in a developed business model with increased sustainability, including technological platforms, distribution networks for collecting and returning products and consumer consumption preferences. There are a few intertwined factors to be considered on different societal levels to achieve long-term success.

This study contributes an increased understanding of how more sustainable solutions can be included when developing business models. While the manufacture, distribution and consumption of clothes have an impact on the environment, some retailers and producers want to reduce this environmental impact. One alternative is to change the way clothes are consumed, to include more sharing and circularity.

Solar cells could make textile-based wearable systems energy independent without the need for battery replacement or recharging; however, their laundry resistance, which is prerequisite for the product acceptance of e-textiles, has been rarely examined. This paper aims to report a systematic study of the laundry durability of solar cells embedded in textiles.

This research included small commercial monocrystalline silicon solar cells which were encapsulated with functional synthetic textile materials using an industrially relevant textile lamination process and found them to reliably endure laundry washing (ISO 6330:2012). The energy harvesting capability of eight textile laminated solar cells was measured after 10–50 cycles of laundry at 40 °C and compared with light transmittance spectroscopy and visual inspection.

Five of the eight textile solar cell samples fully maintained their efficiency over the 50 laundry cycles, whereas the other three showed a 20%–27% decrease. The cells did not cause any visual damage to the fabric. The result indicates that the textile encapsulated solar cell module provides sufficient protection for the solar cells against water, washing agents and mechanical stress to endure repetitive domestic laundry.

This study used rigid monocrystalline silicon solar cells. Flexible amorphous silicon cells were excluded because of low durability in preliminary tests. Other types of solar cells were not tested.

A review of literature reveals the tendency of researchers to avoid standardized textile washing resistance testing. This study removes the most critical obstacle of textile integrated solar energy harvesting, the washing resistance.

The health and environmental hazards associated with synthetic dyes have led to a revival of natural dyes that are non-toxic, environmentally benign and coupled with various functions. The study aims to investigate and develop the potentiality of a popular herb called Chromolaena odorata (C. odorata) as a sustainable and stable dyestuff in textiles.

Natural colorant extracted from C. odorata leaves is used to dye the worsted fabric, which is one of the premier end-use of wool in fashion, via the padding method associated with pre-, simultaneous and post-mordanting with chitosan, tannic acid and copper sulfate pentahydrate. The effects of extraction, dyeing and mordanting processes on fabric’s color strength K/S and color difference ΔE_CMC are investigated via International Commission on Illumination’s L*a*b* color space, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, color fastness to washing, rubbing, perspiration and light.

The results obtained indicate extraction with ethanol 90% with a solid/liquid ratio of 1:5 within 1 h, and coloration with a liquor ratio of 1:5 (pH 5) within 2 h under padding pressure of 0.3 MPa are the most effective for coloring worsted fabric.

The C. odorata’s application as a highly effective dyestuff possessing good colorimetric effectiveness has expanded this herb's economic potential, contributing partly to economic growth and adding value to wool in global supply chain.

C. odorata dyestuff has prevailed over other natural colorants because of its impressive color fastness against washing, rubbing, perspiration and especially color stability for pH change.

This paper aims to investigate sustainability-led innovation, focusing on the interplay between product and process innovation for sustainability goals and the underlying supplier–customer relationships. Thus, the paper delves into sustainability-led innovation and how it affects supplier–customer relationships, and vice versa, thus providing a twofold perspective.

The textile industry is the empirical context of this study, which is exploratory research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and experts in the textile industry.

In the textile industry, sustainability-led product innovation concerns mainly product durability and performance, product recyclability and the use of waste for new product development. Process innovation deals with circular economy, traceability and water and chemical use minimization. The paper also shows how sustainability-led innovation is implemented in more technical terms and regarding supplier–customer relationships.

The paper adopts an original perspective on how processes take place in the relationships between suppliers and customers, where there is no dominance of one actor, but innovation emerges from interdependence and interaction. Such perspective allows to provide an in-depth analysis of the supplier–customer relationships and underlying dynamics that affect sustainability-led innovation; moreover, the authors study how such innovation impacts supplier–customer relationships and the underlying relational dynamics. The value of the paper also stands in delivering a real representation of the innovation processes grounded in the textile industry.

International outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 infection has fostered the Italian government to impose the FFP2 protective facial masks in closed environments, including bar, restaurants and, more in general, in the food sector. Protective facial masks are rocketing, both in mass and in costs, in the food sector imposing efforts in fostering reuse strategies and in the achievement of sustainable development goals. The scope of the present paper is to depict possible strategies in manufacturing and reuse strategies that can reduce the carbon footprint (CF) of such devices.

To implement circular economy strategies in the protective facial masks supply chain, it was considered significant to move towards a study of the environmental impact of such devices, and therefore a CF study has been performed on an FFP2 facial mask used in the food sector. Different materials besides the mostly used polypropylene (PP) (polyethylene (PE), polycarbonate (PC), poly (lactic acid) (PLA), cotton, polyurethane (PUR), polystyrene (PS) and nylon 6,6) and different sanitisation alternatives as reuse strategies (both laboratory and homemade static oven, ultraviolet germicidal irradiation) readily implemented have been modelled to calculate the CF of a single use of an FFP2 mask.

The production of textiles in PP, followed by disposal was the main contributor to CF of the single-use FFP2 mask, followed by packaging and transportations. PP and PE were the least impacting, PC, cotton and Nylon 6-6 of the same weight results the worst. PLA has an impact greater than PP and PE obtained from crude oil, followed by PUR and PS. Static laboratory oven obtained an 80.4% reduction of CF with respect to single use PP-made FFP2 mask, whereas homemade oven obtained a similar 82.2% reduction; UV cabinet is the best option, showing an 89.9% reduction.

The key strategies to reduce the environmental impacts of the masks (research for new materials and reuse with sanitisation) should ensure both the retention of filtering capacities and the sanitary sterility of the reused ones. Future developments should include evaluations of textile recycling impacts, using new materials and the evaluation of the life cycle costs of the reused masks.

This paper intends to provide to stakeholders (producers, consumers and policy makers) the tools to choose the best option for producing and reuse environmentally friendly protective facial masks to be used in the food sector, by using both different materials and easily implemented reuse strategies.

The reduction of the CF of protective facial masks in the food sector surely will have relevant positive effects on climate change contributing to reach the goals of reducing CO₂ emissions. The food sector may promote sustainable practices and attract a niche piece of clients particularly sensible to such themes.

The paper has two major novelties. The first one is the assessment of the CF of a single use of an FFP2 mask made with different materials of the non-woven filtering layers; as the major contribution to the CF of FFP2 masks is related to the non-woven textiles manufacturing, the authors test some other different materials, including PLA. The second is the assessment of the CF of one single use of a sanitised FFP2 mask, using different sanitation technologies as those allowed in bars or restaurants.