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Fashion Brands Turn To Clothing Recycling To Fight Waste
Can to closet // Illustration by Kate Walker
Several new companies are scaling fashion recycling by turning textile waste and old fabric into new clothes — saving brands money and saving the world from waste.
Why It Hits: Fashion’s pivot to sustainability is being driven by multiple pressures — increased scrutiny over emissions, growing consumer demand for secondhand clothing, and new laws in Europe and California. In response, several companies are rolling out innovations in AI and hydrothermal energy to keep pace.
Between The Threads: Soon, buying recycled clothes won’t just mean wearing fabric spun from old plastic bottles. Instead, companies are using a variety of methods to tackle the challenge of separating cotton and polyester so both can be reused.
RE&UP, a Dutch company, has built two factories in Turkey that will produce 80,000 metric tons of recycled material annually, supplying brands like Puma and Bestseller starting this year.
Circ, a US startup, has opened a plant in France that will produce 70,000 metric tons of material each year, with Allbirds and designer Patrick McDowell set to use its recycled fabric by 2028.
Reju, launched by France’s Technip, is building a facility in the Netherlands expected to create 50,000 metric tons of a material for new polyester by 2029.
Syre, a co-venture between H&M Group and investment firm Vargas, plans to build factories worldwide (it already has demonstration plants in North Carolina) that will service brands like Gap and Target.
The Future: While the combined output of these companies may sound pretty significant, global textile fiber production totaled about 132 million metric tons last year alone, according to Textile Exchange. Only 1% of that came from recycled textiles, so there’s plenty of room for growth. Still, Adam Gardiner, recycling lead at Textile Exchange, called the surge in new facilities “a huge step forward.”
Next Season: One day, the recycled-textile supplier a brand partners with could become a selling point, as consumers start to recognize and seek out higher-quality rewoven materials.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.