TEXTILES.ORG
Advanced textile recycling, including chemical, enzymatic, and molecular technologies, is considered by many to be the path to true circularity, making waste into materials not once, but over and over.
Globally, 73 percent of collected apparel textile waste, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, is landfilled or incinerated. Textile Exchange (TE) reports that of the 124 million metric tons of textiles produced in 2023, less than one percent consisted of recycled textile fibers.
The biggest share of the global fiber market—64 percent in 2021, according to TE—is made from petroleum-based synthetics: polyester, nylon, acrylic and others. In advanced recycling, synthetic textile fibers are “depolymerized,” broken down into monomers, and then recombined in various ways to create new fibers.
But to be successful, these cutting-edge technologies require partners to ensure a steady supply of textile waste inputs, a reliable supply chain for sorting and processing them, and offtake agreements from downstream brands and manufacturers.
Economic viability
Reju™, a new and progressive materials regeneration company, has created an innovative game plan that will turn hard-to-recycle polyester waste into new textiles in an infinite loop. Owned by Technip Energies, a leading engineering and technology company, Reju is led by apparel industry veteran Patrik Frisk as CEO and Technip’s Alain Poincheval as COO. The company was incorporated a year ago and has just opened its Regeneration Hub Zero in Frankfurt, Germany, where it expects to begin deliveries of Reju Polyester, made from textile waste, in 2025.
Reju utilizes VolCat, an organic catalytic chemical recycling process for polyester textiles and packaging, developed in a joint venture between Technip, IBM and Under Armour, although Under Armour is no longer involved. The process extracts clean monomers while creating 50 percent less CO2e than virgin polyester.
Clean monomers result in better yarn and better fabric. “We want to help the brands make better-performing products, such as fibers that shed less,” says Frisk. The process will also enable the circular regeneration of polyester waste for industrial, automotive, and aviation textiles.
“Reju is not a start-up,” Frisk insists. “It’s an industrial project to solve one of our biggest societal problems. We see ourselves as a growth company. Textile waste is our biggest opportunity.”
Reju’s “secret sauce” is the company’s team of textile and marketing experts. It includes textile aggregators, fiber and yarn spinners, textile mills and brands such as DuPont, Gore, Patagonia, Timberland and Under Armour.
“While it’s important to talk about technologies, it’s putting together the economic model that’s critical to success,” says Frisk. To that end, Reju is teaming with Goodwill®, the largest second-hand retailer in North America along with Waste Management, Inc. (WM®), a leading waste management and environmental services company based in Houston, to secure a supply of unsaleable textile waste as feedstock for textile-to-textile regeneration. (See “Goodwill’s initiative to support textile circularity“)
Reju is eyeing the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe for its first regeneration hubs, “because that’s where the waste is. Waste is local; offtake is global,” says Frisk. While initial volumes will be small to encourage innovation, the future sites will have a capacity of 50,000 metric tons.
“To tackle the challenges posed by discarded textiles, we need radical collaboration and cooperation, and through our potential project with Goodwill and WM, we are building the ecosystem to achieve textile circularity,” said Frisk in a press release.
Scaling up molecular recycling
In 2021, Eastman Chemical Company commercialized two technologies for the transformation of hard-to-recycle plastic waste into new material for high-quality polymers, with lower greenhouse gas emissions. In March 2024, the company’s molecular recycling plant in Kingsport, Tenn. achieved on-spec initial production, moving forward towards reaching its capacity to recycle 110,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually, including plastic packaging, carpet and polyester textiles.
“Today with one plant, the level of feedstock is manageable,” says Chris Killian, Eastman senior VP and chief technology officer. “But the infrastructure challenge is to grow.”
Eastman’s Polyester Renewal Technology (PRT) employs methanolysis to convert polyesters back to their basic monomers and create new materials. Eastman’s Carbon Renewal Technology (CRT) processes a wider spectrum of plastic waste materials, deriving syngas used in the production of fibers such as Eastman’s Naia™ recyclable cellulose acetate.
While much of Kingsport’s recycled output is durable consumer plastics, Eastman recently collaborated with apparel brand Patagonia to recycle 8,000 pounds of pre- and post-consumer clothing waste, which Eastman processed to make new fiber.
The company has two additional molecular recycling plants in the works. A Longview, Texas, facility, to be completed in 2027-2028, will be partially funded by a U.S. Dept. of Energy contract from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. According to Killian, the Texas plant will leverage solar energy with thermal battery technology for heat and power, lowering CO2e; and will also feature a polymerization facility. The goal for the two plants is to recycle 250 million pounds of plastic annually by 2025, doubling that volume by 2030.
Eastman will build its third molecular recycling plant Normandy, France. “We are currently working on offtake contracts,” says Killian. “Europe has a stronger regulatory environment as well as more advanced collection systems. Ultimately our commercial customer base, as well as our inputs, need to be regional.”
Recycling at “hyperscale”
Syre, a textile impact company based in Stockholm, launched this year with a mission to establish textile-to-textile plants producing circular polyester across the globe. The company’s ambition is to have multiple production plants up and running at capacity by 2032, producing more than three million metric tons of circular PET.
Funded by H&M Group, Vargas, Volvo, TPG Rise Climate and other investors, Syre employs a depolymerization process for waste textiles that produces BHET (Bis(2-Hydroxyethyl) terephthalate), which then undergoes a polymerization process to become PET. More sustainable than rPET created from post-consumer plastic bottles, Syre’s textile-to-textile production can also handle polyester blends and reduces CO2e by up to 85 percent compared to oil-based virgin polyester.
Syre is working with the apparel, automotive, and home interior industries to turn textile waste into new, high-quality products. According to Emma Stjernlöf, Syre’s chief communications and people officer, H&M’s commitment includes an offtake agreement for $600 million-worth of circular PET over seven years, “the biggest in the industry to date,” she says. “More to come as we are speaking very actively to some of the largest brands across polyester-intense industry verticals.”
“On the feedstock side, we have several agreements in place but are not ready yet to go public with the names,” she says.
While established in Sweden, Syre is putting down roots in North Carolina. The company acquired its technology with the purchase of N.C.-based Premirr Plastics, which has spent the last nine years developing ways to turn consumer waste into circular PET.
The company’s next step is a Blueprint plant, to be built in a strategic partnership with Selenis, a leading global supplier of high-quality specialty polyester solutions. Syre’s facility will adjoin Selenis’ production plant in Cedar Creek, N.C., to create a continuous production flow, covering processes from pre-processing depolymerization to polymerization and PET-chips production. The plant, scheduled to be operational in mid-2025, will be capable of delivering up to 10,000 metric tons of circular polyester annually.
“We call this establishment a Blueprint Plant since the work there will lay the foundation for Syre’s continued global expansion, with the process being mirrored and scaled up in our upcoming gigascale plants globally,” said Syre CEO Dennis Nobelius in a press release.
The company has shortlisted Vietnam and Iberia for its first full-scale plants, while its R&D will remain in North Carolina.
Advanced recycling from Down Under
Australian enviro-tech innovator Samsara Eco is creating infinitely recyclable nylon 6,6 from textile waste through a patented technology using plastic-eating enzymes called EosEco™. According to Sarah Cook, the company’s CCO and COO, the enzymatic process is capable of recycling polyester, nylon 6, and blended textiles as well.
Backed by Main Sequence and Woolworths Group, Samsara launched in 2020 out of Australian National University. With a facility in Australian Capital Territories near Canberra and R&D at the university labs, a new Commercial Innovation Hub in Jerrabomberra, New South Wales is due to open mid-2025.
“We’re also planning to build the world’s first nylon 6,6 enzymatic recycling facility with NILIT Ltd. in Southeast Asia, which we’re targeting to be operational by late 2026,” says Cook. “Our facilities in Australia have already enabled us to produce a sold-out clothing line with Lululemon (the Anorak jacket) and we will continue to increase our scale as our new facilities in Australia and Southeast Asia come online in the coming years.”
“We are working with brands to return their post-consumer and post-industrial textiles into raw materials so that they can create new garments, establishing an infinite loop,” Cook says. “Our supply chain for offtakes is with spinners, yarn and textile manufacturers as well as global brands.”
The company also plans to scale its tech to infinitely recycle all forms of plastics and tackle other supply chains such as automotive, electronics and consumer packaged goods. “The ability to infinitely recycle plastic in an environmentally friendly way is a game changer for brands and our planet,” said Samsara founder and CEO Paul Riley in a press release. “Our enzymatic recycling technology makes it easy for brands in almost every industry to meet their sustainability and decarbonization goals by creating a circular loop for plastics.”
“EosEco reduces the end-to-end recycling time, while also operating at a lower temperature and pressure to ultimately reduce waste and carbon emissions. By solving the circularity piece of the puzzle for all plastics, we’re making it possible to imagine a more sustainable future,” Riley adds.
Debra Cobb is a freelance writer based in North Carolina with special expertise in the textile industry. She is a frequent contributor to Textile Technology Source.