Chapter 7 — full chapter
7.5.1 Case Study — PICVISA: AI-Powered Textile Sorting
PICVISA is a Spanish technology company developing artificial intelligence and computer vision systems for automated textile sorting. Its ECOSORT TEXTILE platform uses optical sensors, near-infrared spectroscopy and AI algorithms to identify fibre composition, colours and garment characteristics, automatically separating textiles into high-quality recycling streams. By replacing manual sorting with intelligent automation, the system increases sorting accuracy, improves the quality of recycled feedstocks and enables more efficient fibre-to-fibre recycling. PICVISA's technology is currently being implemented in textile sorting facilities across Europe, including pilot projects in Portugal and Slovakia, demonstrating how digital technologies are becoming essential to scaling circular textile recycling.
Cross-link and reality check: this case answers the question raised by the LIPOR case in Chapter 1 — why sorting infrastructure is necessary for an urban textile mine to be accessible — by showing how automated identification and routing can raise the quality of what that infrastructure recovers. Its limits are equally instructive: optical sorting performs only as well as the condition and composition of the input and the data available about each item allow, and it depends on downstream recyclers being able to accept what is separated. Automated sorting produces better-sorted streams, not automatically recycled ones.
https://picvisa.com/optical-sorting/ecosort-textil/ and https://picvisa.com/textile-recycling-europe/