ICT new tools for a sustainable textile and clothing industry

Abstract

Sustainability in the textile and clothing industry is seen as a subject of the major producers, with many brands divulging their concern about protecting people and the environment and adopting an environmental friendly communication approach. For companies in the textile and clothing sector (especially SMEs), the circular economy provides an opportunity to create new profit streams, increase their resilience to volatile input costs, and support their efforts to become completely sustainable and socially responsible. EU textile and clothing industry needs a flexible workforce that can respond to the development and to the globalised market and the need for sustainable design and manufacturing in order to respond to the global demand for sustainable creative products. In this frame, it is important to have suitable tools to train the employees, to prepare them to deal with these new challenges, to enhance their knowledge, and to develop new skills and competencies for this new type of business. This paper introduces a new training toolkit, which will contribute to the training process of the personnel involved in the textile and clothing industry. This toolkit contains e-learning courses in six European languages, mainly various sources (books, video) and activities (quizzes and forums), which are uploaded and available on the Udemy platform.