NSF Engines: North Carolina Textile Innovation and Sustainability Engine

NSF 引擎：北卡罗来纳州纺织创新和可持续发展引擎

• 批准号: 2315305
• 负责人: Sara Chester
• 金额: $ 1500万
• 依托单位: THE INDUSTRIAL COMMONS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2026-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2315305&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Engines; North; Carolina; Textile

The NSF Engines award to the North Carolina Textile Innovation and Sustainability Engine will advance our nation’s capacity for innovation in textiles through a lens of environmental sustainability and with an eye toward circularity, positioning the NSF Engine as a global leader in this sector. Centered in the “textile belt” of North Carolina, the NSF Engine aims to disrupt and revolutionize the $96B textile industry. Textiles are ubiquitous. If successful, the innovation ecosystem driven by the NSF Engine will result in unprecedented advances in, for example, smart textiles and wearable tech to textiles being used in innovative ways for protection or in the medical field. While other regions of the US have lost textile jobs, this region’s textile jobs have stabilized and the region boasts the largest concentration of textile workers in the US with over 27,000 workers and an additional 30,000 in adjacent industries such as waste streams and furniture workers, spanning almost 2,000 companies. The NSF Engine is led by The Industrial Commons, a non-profit with a strong reputation within the textile sector as well as other fields for being a hub of regional, rural innovation with deep local, national, and sectoral knowledge and relationships. North Carolina State University’s (NCSU’s) Wilson College of Textiles (WCOT) is leading the NSF Engine’s research and development (R&D) innovations. The NSF Engine also includes partnerships across community colleges, manufacturers, brands, economic development, and state government, among others. The team is thus poised with the infrastructure and ties to rapidly develop, revitalize, and scale a cutting edge and environmentally sustainable textile industry that can be competitive in the global economy. Circularity is the pinnacle in terms of sustainability and the NSF Engine will push industry toward it, building replicable systems and innovations to capture and process post-consumer waste at scale, and process it into the building blocks that can become fibers for new textiles. At the same time, the NSF Engine is looking toward immediate impact by taking a broader approach that focuses on all aspects of the sustainability ecosystem. This includes an emphasis on designing for end of life, increasing durability of products, expanding repair capabilities to keep products in use and developing better systems and processes for textile reclamation. The NSF Engine will also focus on increased consumer education and increased re-use of materials including additional material from the landfill and toward downcycling options such as production of nonwovens. The NSF Engine will research and advance additive chemistries, new materials, manufacturing and operations, and chemical and mechanical recycling. The NSF Engine will also be forward-looking with textile applications in, for example, fiber-based materials used in wind turbine blades or health monitoring of roadways, bridges, and structural components; nanofibers used in battery components such as the separators, anodes and cathodes to improve storage performance; and geotextiles used in hardscape and landscape applications to prevent pests from accessing crops without compromising water and light penetration. Last, the NSF Engine will also seek opportunities to both develop and inform policy, standards, and labeling that create clear definitions for textile circularity and sustainability, while facilitating broader understanding of advanced and sustainable materials.The NSF Engine has a region of service that encompasses the local textile supply chain covering central and western North Carolina, and stretching into the Appalachian regions of upstate South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southern VA. The NSF Engine has a strong foundation in inclusive economic development and workforce development through its lead organization, which founds and scales employee-owned social enterprises and industrial cooperatives and supports frontline workers to build a new southern working class. NCSU’s WCOT, an international leader in textile innovation, will drive R&D together with other academic institutions. The NSF Engine’s translation of R&D to products is built on partnerships such as the Manufacturing Solutions Center—which supports U.S. manufacturers through, for example, a business incubator and will be providing product testing, prototyping, and sourcing; Bear Fiber—the nation’s first processor and manufacturer of American grown textile-grade hemp fiber, yarn, fabric and apparel; and capital access and venture capital development such as the state-level foundation, NC IDEA. Leading the workforce development efforts, together with other community colleges and manufacturers, is Gaston College’s Textile Technology Center, which will provide, for example, testing, rapid prototyping, and will develop better equipment and measurements for biodegradation testing and overall sustainable fiber life cycle testing. The NSF Engine is further supported by North Carolina’s Department of Commerce and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, will be leading the NSF Engine’s evaluation efforts, leveraging its expertise in technology-based regional economic development.The NSF Engine is deeply committed to ensuring accessibility to well-paying, quality jobs for all communities in the region of service and to preparing the region’s existing and future workforce for the innovations to come in sustainable textiles. The NSF Engine’s workforce development efforts involve creating new curricula and certificates at the partnering community colleges focused on the NSF Engine’s topic, growing apprenticeship and internship opportunities for high school and community college students within the range of textile manufacturing companies in the region, and increasing worker diversity, worker voice, and agency. For example, partnering with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the NSF Engine plans to establish a formal textile career pathway. The NSF Engine will also continue to expand partnerships with workforce development entities including state and government institutions and job pipeline programs, such as the county health departments, many of which are investing opioid settlement funds into programs and strategies that create new career pathways . It will additionally build partnerships with organizations that provide wrap-around services that address barriers to employment in order to create resources for manufacturers to navigate these processes, update internal policies and more quickly hire veterans, immigrant workers or returning citizens as well as sharing wage scales, communicating with all employees the opportunities to advance within their workplace. It also plans to establish “Job Quality Standards” to hold employers accountable to health and safety standards, as has been successful in the Carolina Textile District.This region has deep roots in the textile industry, with over one hundred years of experience, together with a density of companies, textile workers, and R&D expertise that can drive forward innovation, making this NSF Engine the prime location in the US to revitalize this industry and build a textile-focused, environmentally sustainable innovation ecosystem. The assembled starting coalition includes a well-established group of leaders, connectors, innovators, and doers in the textile sector, all driven by the goal of inclusive economic development that will bring with it new jobs, opportunities, and economic prosperity for the region.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF发动机奖授予北卡罗来纳纺织创新和可持续发展发动机，将通过环境可持续性和循环性的视角推进我国纺织品创新的能力，将NSF发动机定位为该领域的全球领导者。NSF引擎以北卡罗来纳州的“纺织带”为中心，旨在颠覆和彻底改变价值960亿美元的纺织工业。纺织品无处不在。如果成功，由NSF引擎驱动的创新生态系统将带来前所未有的进步，例如智能纺织品和可穿戴技术，以创新的方式用于保护或医疗领域的纺织品。当美国其他地区的纺织业就业岗位减少时，该地区的纺织业就业岗位却稳定下来，该地区是美国纺织工人最集中的地区，有2.7万多名纺织工人，另外还有3万多名纺织工人从事废物处理和家具等邻近行业，涉及近2000家公司。NSF引擎由工业共享组织（The Industrial Commons）领导。工业共享组织是一家非营利组织，在纺织行业以及其他领域享有很高的声誉，因为它是一个具有深厚的地方、国家和行业知识和关系的区域、农村创新中心。北卡罗莱纳州立大学（NCSU）威尔逊纺织学院（WCOT）领导着NSF发动机的研发创新。NSF引擎还包括社区学院、制造商、品牌、经济发展和州政府等的合作伙伴关系。因此，该团队准备好了基础设施和联系，以迅速发展，振兴和扩大尖端和环境可持续的纺织工业，使其在全球经济中具有竞争力。循环是可持续性的顶峰，NSF引擎将推动工业向它发展，建立可复制的系统和创新，以大规模捕获和处理消费后的废物，并将其加工成可以成为新纺织品纤维的积木。与此同时，NSF引擎正在寻求通过采取更广泛的方法，关注可持续生态系统的各个方面，从而产生直接影响。这包括强调寿命结束的设计，提高产品的耐用性，扩大维修能力以保持产品的使用，以及开发更好的纺织品回收系统和工艺。NSF引擎还将专注于增加消费者教育和增加材料的再利用，包括从垃圾填埋场中提取的额外材料，以及非织造布生产等低循环选择。NSF发动机将研究和推进添加剂化学、新材料、制造和操作以及化学和机械回收。NSF发动机还将在纺织应用方面具有前瞻性，例如，用于风力涡轮机叶片或道路、桥梁和结构部件健康监测的纤维基材料；纳米纤维用于电池组件，如隔膜、阳极和阴极，以提高存储性能；土工布用于硬景观和景观应用，在不影响水和光渗透的情况下防止害虫接近作物。最后，NSF引擎还将寻求机会制定和通知政策、标准和标签，为纺织品的循环性和可持续性创造明确的定义，同时促进对先进和可持续材料的更广泛理解。NSF引擎的服务区域包括当地的纺织品供应链，覆盖北卡罗来纳州中部和西部，并延伸到南卡罗来纳州北部、田纳西州东部和弗吉尼亚州南部的阿巴拉契亚地区。NSF引擎通过其领导组织在包容性经济发展和劳动力发展方面拥有坚实的基础。它建立并扩大了员工所有的社会企业和工业合作社，并支持一线工人建立一个新的南方工人阶级。NCSU的WCOT是纺织创新领域的国际领导者，将与其他学术机构一起推动研发。NSF引擎将研发转化为产品是建立在制造解决方案中心等合作伙伴关系的基础上的，该中心通过企业孵化器为美国制造商提供支持，并将提供产品测试、原型设计和采购；贝尔纤维——美国第一家纺织级大麻纤维、纱线、织物和服装的加工商和制造商；资金获取和风险投资发展，如国家级基金会、NC IDEA。加斯顿学院的纺织技术中心与其他社区学院和制造商一起领导劳动力发展工作，该中心将提供测试、快速原型制作，并将开发更好的设备和测量方法，用于生物降解测试和整体可持续纤维生命周期测试。NSF引擎得到了北卡罗莱纳州商务部和北卡罗莱纳州环境质量部的进一步支持。RTI国际是一家非营利性研究机构，将利用其在以技术为基础的区域经济发展方面的专业知识，领导国家科学基金引擎的评估工作。NSF引擎坚定地致力于为服务地区的所有社区提供高薪、高质量的工作，并为该地区现有和未来的劳动力做好准备，以实现可持续纺织品的创新。NSF引擎的劳动力发展工作包括在合作的社区大学创建新的课程和证书，重点关注NSF引擎的主题，在该地区的纺织制造公司范围内为高中和社区大学学生提供更多的学徒和实习机会，以及增加工人的多样性，工人的声音和代理。例如，与北卡罗莱纳州公共教育部合作，NSF引擎计划建立一个正式的纺织职业路径。NSF引擎还将继续扩大与劳动力发展实体的合作伙伴关系，包括州和政府机构以及工作管道项目，如县卫生部门，其中许多机构正在将阿片类药物解决基金投资于创造新职业途径的项目和战略。此外，它还将与提供解决就业障碍的全方位服务的组织建立合作伙伴关系，以便为制造商创造资源，以引导这些流程，更新内部政策，更快地雇用退伍军人，移民工人或归国公民，以及分享工资标准，与所有员工沟通在工作场所晋升的机会。它还计划制定“工作质量标准”，要求雇主对健康和安全标准负责，这在卡罗来纳纺织区已经取得了成功。该地区在纺织行业有着深厚的根基，拥有超过百年的经验，加上密集的公司、纺织工人和研发专业知识，可以推动创新，使这个NSF引擎成为美国振兴该行业和建立一个以纺织为重点、环境可持续的创新生态系统的最佳地点。创始联盟的成员包括纺织行业的知名领导者、联络人、创新者和实干家，所有这些人都以包容性经济发展为目标，为该地区带来新的就业机会、机遇和经济繁荣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。