Over half of the world clothes are made from polyester. With most of these garments failing to be recycled, Resource explains the problem with polyester textiles recycling and what barriers are being overcome to mainstream it.
People in the UK dont know where to throw away their old clothes or what kinds of clothes can be remade or recycled because there are not any clear signs or laws like the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.
Sorting and separating textiles is a problem for the business as a whole. Textile trash includes a lot of different kinds of materials, like cotton, wool, synthetic fibres, and more. All of these materials need to be separated so that they can be recycled in the best way possible. Brand-new ways of sorting are making progress. For example, SATCoL, the Salvation Army trading company, is developing and using infrared technology called "Fibersort" to sort "textiles by fibre type, blend and colour for recycling back into the circular textiles supply chain."
It is not easy to keep track of and sort all the different fabrics, though, because they also need to be recovered. 65% of the world fibre market is made up of synthetic fibres like "polyester," but the fashion industry has not found a real use for textile-to-textile polyester recycling yet.
But loads of brands sell recycled polyester clothing?
There is a common misconception about the recycling of polyester. For example, articles of clothing that are sold with the label "recycled polyester" on them almost never originate from other types of polyester textiles; rather, they are typically derived from other sources of polyester, such as PET bottles.
Polyester is also known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The bottles are cleaned and sorted by colour before being shred into flakes, melted, and extruded, which means squished, into plastic strands. After that, the strands are spun into a yarn that can be used to make clothes. This is a pretty easy mechanical recycling method that is used in a lot of different fields. Chemical recycling is needed for textile-to-textile polyester recovery, which is a more complicated process.
Georgia Parker, Innovation Platform Director at Amsterdam-based Fashion for Good, explains: “The chemical recycling of textiles, as the name suggests, uses chemical processes to break down textile waste to a molecular level. The different outputs of chemical recycling offer multiple points of re-entry into the fashion supply chain and allow for a more versatile product range than mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling is also thought to increase the purity of the output products in comparison to mechanical recycling.
Most of the recycled polyester on the market is actually made from plastic bottle sources rather than textiles. As such, the fashion industry is currently trying to ease the reliance on the bottling industry and push for circularity by investing in innovations in textile-to-textile polyester recycling.
Recycling polyester textiles at scale
Many people think that polyester textile-to-textile recycling is one of the most important changes that needs to be made to the fabrics industry in order for it to become sustainable. There are many large-scale projects around the world that are testing this idea.
This year, SATCoL Project Re:claim and Project Plan B announced plans for the UK first commercial-scale post-consumer polyester recycling factory. The exclusive textile-to-textile polyester recycling system uses the Thermo Mechanical Extrusion Recycler (TMER) machine to recycle polyester garments and offcuts into rPET pellets. SATCoL placed the machine at its Kettering processing centre, which sorts and processes 65,000 tonnes of donated textiles annually. With the first experiments starting in September, SATCoL hopes to learn how feedstock quality influences output.
SATCoL needs corporate partners to donate 100% polyester textiles to maximize recycling volume and potential. Several retail and business clients have partnered with the project to achieve a fibre-to-fibre circular model. It wants to work with the NHS and laundry sector, who use a lot of polyester, commercially.
A collaboration lead by Fashion for Good initiated the Full Circle Textile Project in Amsterdam towards the end of 2021 to study polyester textile recycling scalability. The project chemically recycles polyester to produce virgin-quality fabric for several textiles. However, lack of funding, brand penetration, and low, pricey output make it difficult to compete with cheaper virgin options. The next step of the project will focus on scaling these solutions. The team intends to share findings early next year.
The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKIRTA) launched The Green Machine in 2016 with H&M funding. This initiative claims to be the first to use a hydrothermal technique to entirely separate and recycle cotton and polyester blends into fresh fibres and cellulose powder without quality degradation. A full-scale machine has been running at one of its Asian factories for seven years. Famous fashion brand Monki released its first Green Machine collection this year. HKIRTA and the H&M Foundation agree an open license for technology use at cost with no margins is crucial to maximum effect and fashion industry transformation.
Wrapping up the polyester problem
Progress in isolated experiments around the world suggests a solution to polyester textile recycling. Textile-to-textile recycling may become widespread in the next years with the appropriate financing and partnerships. The industry, especially high-street firms with greater margins, would certainly need to respond to increasing expenses to make economic sense.
Fashion for Good argues that various variables will be needed to scale textile-to-textile recycling, with brands or manufacturers prepared to pay the price premium in the short run.
Policy involvement is needed, said Innovation Platform Director Georgia Parker: “Government policy and regulation also drives systemic change. Brands are under pressure from legislation to track their products and close the loop.
More is needed to provide a framework of policies and incentives that will drive systemic change. At the same time, the public sector must increase its direct investments and support to catalyse investment from the private and philanthropic sector.
