The European Union is tackling industrial pollution with a new initiative designed to yield a more sustainable textile sector. An innovation observatory project is being introduced aimed at improving this process and reducing industrial pollution in Europe. The innovation observatory, which will operate through 2020, requests stakeholders to submit better information on emerging techniques—methods that ensure an equivalent or higher level of environmental protection than existing techniques.

Industrial pollution accounts for a large share of Europe’s overall pollution problem, thanks to the emission of air pollutants, discharges of wastewater and waste generation. One goal of the observatory will be to document complete information on emerging techniques and track the latest innovation cycles that could help the EU’s environmental goals. From there, the focus will be on engaging with a more comprehensive set of stakeholders involved in the review process to improve the level of information captured, which should ultimately lead to the adoption of new, better techniques.

With the observatory, the EU and related stakeholders can identify novel emerging ideas and assess their progress to improve overall sustainability in Europe’s textile sector. The project also aims to yield two databases, a stakeholder database and a novel technique database. The stakeholder database will involve a set of industrial technologies experts, while the novel technique database will highlight a set of emerging techniques on industrial activities.