What is TCBL?
TCBL - Textile and Clothing Business Labs - gathers together people and organizations who want to bring real change. Our ambition? To make the textile industry more sustainable, more ethical, and more resilient through innovative approaches to the textile and clothing industry.
Growing public awareness of the industry’s significant social and environmental impacts has led to endless promises and commitments, but little has changed. We think we can make a difference by building an alternative system based on experimentation, trust and shared values along four key axes:
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Environmental: natural, bio-sourced, or waste-derived materials and textiles, reducing the carbon and chemical footprints of production, tracing impacts throughout the lifecycle.
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Social: better inclusion of workers, redeploying women's innovation capital throughout the sector, developing horizontal and responsible value communities, transmitting know-how and good practices.
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Economic: production-centered and agile business models; integration, reconnection, and relocalization of SMEs; associated new services;
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Technological: development of textile biorefineries, 3D textile printing, digital micro-factories, potential and limits of new digital tools (VR, AI and related Data Science solutions, PLM, virtual twins, etc.), human-technology convergence.
To realize this vision, TCBL relies on two complementary operational pillars:
• TCBL Association – A network of some 50 member laboratories and SMEs that test and deploy innovations in real conditions for over 300 community stakeholders.
• Cedecs-TCBL SAS – A group of some 20 European experts (business, technology communication, public policy, etc.) that supports and structures strategic projects for the sector.
The TCBL Association is a non-profit established according to Dutch law. It is an extension of the ideas and results developed in the five-year TCBL Project that received funding from the European Union. See the “Archive” section of this website for more information.