Background More than 70% of airbag cushions produced in the world are made of polyamide fabrics coated with silicone. Polyamides are synthetic polymers- such as nylon – that are commonly used in textiles, automotives, carpet and sportswear because of their extreme durability and strength. In Europe, the airbag cushion industry generates some 9 000 tonnes/yr of waste. As a result of high recycling costs, such complex waste is either not exploited and dumped in Europe or shipped to emerging countries where cheap labour performs the recovery without any environmental considerations and in a non-sustainable way. At the same time, demand for more recycled polyamide plastics is growing fast in all European markets, including in the automotive industry, amongst consumers and producers. Consumers want more eco-designed products. Recycled products are less dependent on fossil- and petroleum-based intermediaries whose prices are volatile and have constantly increased over the last years. Technical polyamide textiles, and in particular scraps generated by the production of airbag cushions, have been identified by the beneficiary as an attractive source for developing new recycling technologies and processes. R&D teams in the company have already developed a fully integrated process able to recycle and re-use the silicone-coated polyamide fabrics into new materials with no significant loss in material properties at small scale. Objectives The 'Move4earth' project aims to validate a new process for recycling and re-using silicone-coated polyamide fabrics from airbag cushions at pre-industrial scale. It hopes to demonstrate its feasibility, including by achieving acceptable final product quality and unit productivity. It plans to develop and operate a demonstrator, recycling 650 kg/hr of silicone-coated polyamide fabrics. It will test the emerging recycled materials to assess their mechanical properties in comparison with non-recycled materials. It thus hopes to reduce the quantity of waste going to landfill or shipped to emerging countries, and also reduce the carbon footprint associated with demand for new raw materials from petrochemical sources. The project will also work to explore possible and appropriate uses for the recycled silicone coating that will emerge as a by-product of the recycling of the polyamide fabric – representing 10% of the original waste product. This hopes to further enhance the economic and environmental performance of the technology. Finally, an ambitious aim of the project is to explore the possible transfer of this technology to other sources of waste, in particular other post-consumer technical textiles. It will work to validate the recycling potential of the demonstration process on six other sources of waste. Expected results: Successful operation of the demonstration processor for recycling silicone-coated polyamide fabrics from airbag cushions (capacity 4 500 tonnes/yr); Recycled polyamide fabrics will demonstrate similar mechanical properties to originals; A 95% re-use rate for the materials – including new markets and uses for the recycled silicone; A significantly reduced carbon footprint as a result of less demand for raw materials extracted from petro-chemical sources and less transportation of waste; Less waste product sent to landfill; and A demonstration of the same capacity and re-use rates for six other sources of waste.