Renewcell wins the 2023 Nordic Council Environment Prize

Renewcell is one of the world’s leading companies within sustaintech. They collect and recycle textile waste, which they transform into the patented textile material Circulose®, which can then be made into new clothes. Renewcell’s product is currently the only virgin grade commercially recycled textile-to-textile material to be used on a large scale.

The Swedish company received this year’s prize this evening at the awards ceremony for the Nordic Council prizes. The prize was awarded by the Norwegian Crown Prince and Princess. The winner of the prize receives DKK 300,000.

The theme for the 2023 Nordic Council Environment Prize is sustainable textile production and consumption. With this theme, the adjudication committee wants to focus on how the Nordics can be pioneers in the necessary transition of the entire textile value chain to bring about a circular fashion industry.

The adjudication committee’s rationale for this year’s winner states that “in a situation where we must first and foremost reduce consumption as well as extend the life of textiles and introduce circular business models, Renewcell’s pioneering process for recycling and reusing textile waste to make new textiles is key to closing the cycle in the textile industry and enabling a circular fashion industry.”

A total of seven projects were nominated for this year’s prize.

The textile industry poses many challenges – social, environmental, and climate-related. Sustainable textile production and a greater awareness of textile consumption in the Nordics can help to encourage positive development on a global level. The dominant business model in textile production and consumption is one based on low-quality products, fast fashion, and ever-growing consumption. The textile manufacturing industry all too often offers badly underpaid work and violates human rights. The multidimensional and systemic problems of the textile and clothing industry mean that changes are needed at multiple levels, by multiple stakeholders.

The Nordic Council Environment Prize was first awarded in 1995 with the aim of raising awareness of work on the environment in the Nordic Region. Anyone can put forward nominees. The prize goes to a company, organisation or individual for exemplary efforts to integrate respect for the environment into their business or work or for some other form of extraordinary initiative on behalf of the environment. The winner receives DKK 300,000.