On the event of the Techtextil fair, VDMA gave two sustainability awards for the first time.
The chairman of VDMA’s Walter Reiners-Stiftung Foundation, Peter D Dornier, has awarded prizes to seven young engineers.

They are awarded for academic works in which, for example, solutions for resource-saving products and technologies are developed.
According to VDMA, a sustainability prize in the category of project work, endowed with €3,000 was awarded to Simon Hoebel, TU Dresden, for his thesis on recycled thermoplastic fibres for composite components.
Marina Michel, TU Dresden, received a sustainability award in the category of master, worth €3,500. The topic of her master thesis was the functionalization of yarns for the filtration of micro- and nanoplastics from water.
A promotion prize in the category of project work, endowed with €4,000, was awarded to a student group from RWTH Aachen.
Also, the teamwork of Luis Gleissner, Leopold Habersbrunner, Frederic Olbrich and Frederik Schicks was the construction of a test rig for tests on oil-adsorbing textiles.
Felix Zerbes, RWTH Aachen, was awarded a promotion prize of €3,500 in the category Master, developed a technical solution for air jet weaving to improve the quality of woven fabric.