September 1, 2021 by Katharina Rudisch

CRTX team visits sorting facility SOEX in Bitterfeld-Wolfen

In August the CRTX team was invited to visit the sorting facility SOEX in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. We met with the managing directors Paul Doertenbach and Melanie Hackler of I:CO (which is part of SOEX) at the SOEX textile sorting facility in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. They welcomed us warmly and gave us a tour through the whole facility and explained the current state of the sorting process at SOEX and the challenges involved. As Paul put it “The more people that know about the challenges involved with textile sorting and recycling, the more people can contribute with ideas to tackle these challenges!”

One important point on the agenda was to install a camera setup for recording images of the sorting process of used garments. These images will be used by Ricardo and Sebastian to train our image-based AI, which will assist and speed up sorting of used garments in the future. Karsten and Katharina were particularly excited to see the new NIR-spectroscopy based sorting machine, which is still being tested, and to discuss with the NIR expert of SOEX. Another pleasant side effect of the trip was that for some of us it was the first time to meet in person. In the evening we headed back to Berlin full of new motivation and inspiration for the CRTX project.