The vegan leather made from India's waste flowersĪs the most common manmade cellulosic fibre (MMCF), viscose is popular because of its lightweight, silk-like quality.Renewcell says it powers its process using 100% renewable energy, generated using hydropower from the nearby Indalsälven river. This can then be dissolved by viscose manufacturers and spun into new viscose fabric. What remains is pure cellulose.Īfter drying, the pulp sheet feels like thick paper.
They then undergo both mechanical and chemical processing that helps to gently separate the tightly tangled cotton fibres from each other. The textiles are first shredded and have buttons, zips and colouring removed. )īy using 100% textile waste – mainly old T-shirts and jeans – as its feedstock, the Renewcell mill makes a biodegradable cellulose pulp they call Circulose. ( Read more about why clothes are so hard to recycle. While the plastics industry has been able to break down pure polyester (PET) for decades, the blended nature of textiles has made it challenging to recycle one fibre, without degrading the other. The reason for polyester 's prevalence is the low cost of fossil-based synthetic fibres, making them a popular choice for fast fashion brands, which prioritise price above all else – polyester costs half as much per kg as cotton. Cotton is second, with a market share of approximately 22%. The majority of clothes in our wardrobes are made from a blend of textiles, with polyester the most widely produced fibre, accounting for a 54% share of total global fibre production, according to the global non-profit Textile Exchange. Much of the technical difficulty in recycling worn-out clothes back into new clothing comes down to their composition. Many high street stores with take-back schemes, including Levi Strauss and H&M, operate a three-pronged system: resell (for example, to charity shops), re-use (convert into other products, such as cleaning cloths or mops) or recycle (into carpet underlay, insulation material or mattress filling – clothing is not listed as an option). While charity shops, textiles banks and retailer "take-back" schemes help to keep those donated clothes in wearable condition in circulation, the capabilities of recycling clothes at end-of-life are currently limited. Just 1% of recycled clothes are turned back into new garments. The fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN.
Landfill sites release equal parts carbon dioxide and methane – the latter greenhouse gas being 28 times more potent than the former over a 100-year period. We need to make fashion circular." This means limiting fashion waste and pollution while also keeping garments in use and reuse for as long as possible by developing collection schemes or technologies to turn textiles into new raw materials.Įach year, more than 100 billion items of clothing are produced globally, according to some estimates, with 65% of these ending up in landfill within 12 months. "We can 't deplete Earth 's natural resources by pumping oil to make polyester, cut down trees to make viscose or grow cotton, and then use these fibres just once in a linear value chain ending in oceans, landfills or incinerators. "The linear model of fashion consumption is not sustainable," says Renewcell chief executive Patrik Lundström. With ambitions to recycle the equivalent of more than 1.4 billion T-shirts every year by 2030, the new plant marks the beginning of a significant shift in the fashion industry's ability to recycle used clothing at scale.
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While mechanical textiles-to-textiles recycling, which involves the manual shredding of clothes and pulling them apart into their fibres, has existed for centuries, Renewcell is the first commercial mill to use chemical recycling, allowing it to increase quality and scale production. The Swedish pulp producer Renewcell has just opened the world's first commercial-scale, textile-to-textile chemical recycling pulp mill, after spending 10 years developing the technology. On the Swedish coast of the Baltic Sea, in the city of Sundsvall – home to the country's pulp and paper industry – a team of scientists, chemists, entrepreneurs and textile manufacturers are celebrating a milestone birthday, under a banner which features the slogan "#SolutionsAreSexy".
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