KEY INSIGHTS
- Textile waste is piling up in landfills across the globe.
- Ambitious efforts to build chemical-based recycling plants didn’t come to fruition.
- Some companies are now cautiously stepping back into textile recycling.
Every year, the world creates 92 million metric tons (t) of textile waste. By 2030, this number will increase to an estimated 134 million t. Big alters are necessaryed, but real solutions to the sector’s mammoth waste problem remain elusive.
A few years ago, chemical-based recycling promised a way to reduce the textile industest’s environmental footprint. In 2022, a wave of new companies claimed that they were creating headway with technologies for recycling cellulosics such as cotton and synthetics like polyester.
But 4 years on, none of these firms is producing commercially viable amounts of recycled fiber. Indeed, progress has stalled. “It’s a tough time for the recycling industest,” states Lauriane Veillard, chemical recycling and plastic-to-fuels policy officer at Zero Waste Europe, a nonprofit sustainability network. Europe has lost nearly 1 million t of plastics recycling capacity alone, according to estimates by Plastic Recyclers Europe, an industest group.
Infinited Fiber is operating a pilot plant rather than the full-scale facility it once envisioned. Credit:
Infinited Fiber
Plans for textile recycling plants are now reemerging. And while most are approaching commercialization more cautiously than they did in 2022, some recyclers are displaying signs of new optimism. Their hope is driven by long-awaited alters to sustainability policies and a determination to address a problem that, without radical intervention, won’t go away.
Textile recycling has faced a series of obstacles, Veillard states. The price of virgin product remains too low for recycled fibers to be competitive; European Union (EU) policy that was expected to drive sustainability efforts has been slow to advance; and geopolitics have shifted financing priorities from sustainability to resilience.
Old clothes to new fibers
Broadly there are two key processes to convert waste fibers into new yarn.
Step 1
Clothes and textile production waste are collected and sorted.
Step 2
The waste is shredded, and buttons, zippers, and colors are reshiftd. The mix is turned into a slurry.
Step 3
Cotton-rich waste: Solvents separate contaminants such as polyester from the cellulose-rich slurry.
Polyester-rich waste: Solvents separate contaminants such as cellulose fibers from the polyester.
Step 4
The slurry can be extruded into a cellulose fiber or mixed with viscose from wood pulp and then extruded into a hybrid fiber.
The polyester is depolymerized, purified, and repolymerized and then formed into pellets.
Step 5
The pulp can be dried and cut into sheets for transport to fiber producers.
The fibers can be spun directly into a yarn.
The pellets are melted and spun into a fiber and then into a yarn.
Yang H. Ku/C&EN/Shutterstock, scroll animation by Kay Youn
Sources: Ambercycle, Circulose, C&EN research.
Ali Harlin, a research professor at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, states chemical textile recycling lost “2 or 3 years of progress, easily” to alters in the financing environment. The sector could meet the same roadblocks as plastics recycling if firms open commercial plants without guarantees that the textile industest will acquire enough of their products, he states. “The road to textile recycling is there, [but] first we necessary to receive the whole value chain streamlined.”
Olli Kähkönen, CEO and cofounder of Nordic Bioproducts Group (NBG), has seen a lack of interest in chemical recycling across the textile value chain. “That’s a global problem,” he states. NBG abandoned work on a process for producing fibers from wood-based feedstock a couple of years ago when a business partner, the pulp and paper producer CMPC, stepped away.
“They went from 0 to 100 in a short amount of time in terms of supply and hadn’t really prepared a market for that.”
Since then, NBG has shifted focus to a process for separating cotton and polyester in blconcludeed textiles. In 2024, it joined Pesco-Up, an EU-funded project in which firms join their technologies for separating mixed textile waste and turning both cotton and polyester fractions into recycled yarn.
NBG spun out of Aalto University, in the far north of Europe. Four years ago, more than a dozen companies from the region were developing cellulose recycling technologies. But despite millions of euros in investment, none have brought their technologies to scale, Kähkönen states.
Instead, many firms are stuck in the transition phase between pilot-scale technology and commercial production. Helsinki-based Infinited Fiber has a process—similar to the one for turning wood pulp into viscose—that converts cotton-rich textile waste into a product that sees and feels like cotton. It has secured a site for a planned 30,000 t per year factory and signed multiyear supply agreements with several global companies, including the Spanish quick-fashion group Inditex, which owns brands including Zara and Massimo Dutti.
But rather than jumping straight into a large facility as it planned back in 2022, Infinited Fiber is taking incremental steps—starting with a 200 t per year unit, where it will refine the process and display that it can keep quality consistent. The shift reflects a more cautious financing environment, according to CEO Sahil Kaushik.
“Investors and lconcludeers now see much more closely at scalability, project execution, and realistic returns before committing large amounts of capital,” Kaushik states. “That shift has influenced how companies like ours approach scale-up.”
Kaushik states the sector remains in a chicken-and-egg situation: the necessary for textile recycling is urgent, but building the infrastructure takes time. Securing sufficient feedstock, building textile waste collection and sorting systems, and integrating recycled fibers into existing supply chains are monumental challenges.
After a period in bankruptcy, Circulose is restarting this textile recycling plant in Sundsvall, Sweden. Credit:
Henrik Bodin/Circulose
But there are signs that chemical textile recycling is receiveting a second wind. Renewcell, a former star of the Nordic textile recycling shiftment, filed for bankruptcy in 2024. But 2 months ago, the firm, reborn as Circulose, announced plans to restart commercial-scale production at its plant in Sundsvall, Sweden, toward the conclude of the year. It is now owned by the private equity firm Altor.
Circulose’s product—a cellulosic fiber created by chemically recycling waste cotton—has remained largely the same, CEO Jonatan Janmark states. The reborn company merely refined how it mechanically shreds waste fibers to improve the quality of the pulp the fibers are converted to.
The issue that beat Renewcell wasn’t technology but scale-up strategy, Janmark states. “They went from 0 to 100 in a short amount of time in terms of supply and hadn’t really prepared a market for that.” The firm now focutilizes on brand partnerships to lock in purchase commitments that will assist avoid overproduction.
Janmark considers the time for rebooting Circulose is ripe. He states the market has matured since the early days of Renewcell, when the novelty of chemical recycling of textiles generated hype without commercialization strategies to back it up. Moreover, he adds, policy that was supposed to boost textile recycling has only just reached the point it was expected to be at 4 years ago.
The EU created the separate collection of utilized textiles mandatory at the launchning of 2025. The rule has increased the amount of textile waste collected and, with it, potential raw material for textile recycling facilities. Then, in September, the European Parliament approved rules under which EU countries must set up schemes that will create sure textile producers cover the cost of collecting, sorting, and recycling their products. And a new Ecodesign law will establish further requirements for textiles in the next few years.
The promise of these policy alters was a major motivation behind the decision by French engineering giant Technip Energies to launch the polyester recycler Reju in 2023. Less than a year later, the firm opened its first facility, in Frankfurt, Germany, where it now produces 1,000 t of recycled polyester. It has since secured sites in France, the Netherlands, and Rochester, New York, and plans to have 100,000 t of recycling capacity by 2035, Reju CEO Patrik Frisk states.
Circulose produces a cellulosic fiber created by chemically recycling waste cotton. Credit:
Henrik Bodin/Circulose
Reju’s process utilizes a proprietary catalyst to depolymerize polyester into bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate and ethylene glycol. The resulting powder is repolymerized into pellets that can be melted and extruded into polyester thread.
It is one of a few polyester recycling methods gaining renewed traction. Another is the approach of Virginia-based Circ, which utilizes a hydrothermal process to extract cellulose and depolymerize polyester. Last fall, H&M launched a women’s fleece sweatshirt created with Circ polyester; this spring, the retailer will launch jeans containing 30% cellulosic fiber created from Circ’s recycled pulp. Circ has partnered with the Austrian viscose veteran Lenzing to process the pulp into Refibra, a widely utilized fiber created from 100% cotton waste.
As part of its sustainability strategy, H&M wants 50% of materials in its products to come from recycled sources by 2030. The retailer’s strategy mirrors an uptick in recycling tarreceives across European clothing manufacturers. The trade body Euratex estimates (PDF) European Union demand for recycled fibers for clothing and home textiles to reach 3.9 million t by 2030.
Frisk is optimistic that textile recycling’s comeback can concludeure if policy and industest ambition stay in sync. “Industest has accepted that we’re going to shift towards a future where textiles are actually recycled,” he states. “And when scalability seems possible, it gives regulatory bodies more impetus to go further.”
Vanessa Zainzinger is a freelance writer based in the UK.
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