Materials Guide: What is Recycled Polyester?
Perhaps you recently bought yourself a new T-shirt or sweatshirt. When you put it on, you read the label, which says, “I used to be a plastic bottle”. If this is the case, your fashion garment was likely manufactured from recycled polyester.
Fashionable or not, most of us wear some form of polyester. Don’t be surprised; it’s the most popular fabric in both the fashion and textile industries. These days, it's as popular as cotton!
And the reason? Recycled polyester is made from recycled plastic bottles. So, your top is telling the truth: it once was a plastic bottle!
Read our informative guide on Recycled Materials right here.
How Does one Make Recycled Polyester Fabric?
This more eco-friendly type of cloth is a great environmentally friendly choice, especially when you compare it to regular virgin polyester. Businesses use renewable raw materials to produce virgin polyester. They make it by melting down existing plastic and respinning it into new polyester fibre.
Factories create recycled polyester out of household items that people have discarded after use. Recycled polyester uses pet as the raw fabric. This type of polyester is made from recycled plastic bottles as well as straws, and containers. People also make it from other similar types of waste from manufacturers and factories.
The Difference Between Virgin Polyester & Recycled Fabrics
Synthetic man-made virgin polyester was first produced in the 1930s. Factories created this virgin material out of fossil fuels. They also produced it using the most common form of plastic on earth, ‘polyethylene terephthalate’. These fibres are still being manufactured to make various products, everything from sustainable fashion garments to upholstery.
Polyester has always been a popular choice, as it doesn’t stretch or shrink after washing. It’s durable and easy to clean, dries fast and doesn’t crease, too.
Factories make this synthetic material from petroleum, which, as we know, is neither practical nor sustainable. The process of transforming crude oil into petroleum involves using an enormous amount of energy, which is not environmentally friendly. It also releases several toxins into the atmosphere. This is harmful to humans, the environment and the world’s fragile eco-system.
The original synthetic polyester fabric is extremely popular and still widely produced. This is despite many sustainable fabrics on the market, including reprocessed polyester.
Creating More Sustainable Polyester
While polyester is extremely popular, the fabric industry is currently looking to increase sustainability by incentivising production of the fabric so that more people manufacture and use recycled polyester. Statistics from the Textile Exchange, who initiated a 2025 Recycled Polyester challenge, has shown that in 2019, “the market share of polyester” created from recycled sources, such as those plastic bottles we mentioned earlier, was just 14%. This year, it’s reached 25%, and with assistance from this challenge, it’s expected to increase exponentially, along with the “associated reduction in greenhouse gas emissions”.
The Current Sustainable Polyester Solution
As we’ve discussed, fabric manufacturers currently create recycled polyester from discarded recyclable plastic bottles and containers, including cold drink bottles, take-away items, straws and the like. But the Recycled Polyester Challenge wants to help them rather use recycled fabrics to create this material. Certainly, recycling with plastic bottles uses fewer resources to produce this more sustainable cloth, and generates fewer CO2 emissions. But there has to be be a more sustainable method.
View maake’s recycled polyester fabrics.
Different Ways to Recycle This Fabric
Recycling plastic bottles has come a long way. The most common method currently used to recycle polyester is mechanical recycling, which involves melting down the waste items to make new thread. However, after recycling polyester this way a few times, the fibre tends to weaken. So, manufacturers had to create another method.
We wrote a fascinating piece on Creating Sustainable Fabrics from Textile Waste. Take a look.
The chemical recycling process is more expensive, but has longer-lasting effects. Factories create it chemically by dissecting plastic molecules and then building them up again into yarn. This method of processing chemically recycled polyester maintains the quality of the thread. In fact, if you do it this way, you can reprocess polyester over and over again.
The Fashion Material, Repreve
You’ll often hear about ‘Repreve’, an upgrade of sustainable recycled polyester. Factories produce this more viable brand in the US under the brand name ‘Unifi.’
First manufactured in 1971, it uses plastic lids and bottles to create the recycled polyester. It’s famous because it has a lower environmental impact. The reason? Producing this type of fibre involves using less energy and water plus less gas emissions.
We mostly use Repreve polyester for fashion brands and athletic wear. Companies also create some materials from these sustainable cloths.
What Makes Recycled Polyester Eco-Friendly?
Recycled Polyester is a viable alternative to the original material and helps reduce our carbon footprint. Factories produce it out of plastic waste.
The manufacturing process conserves much less energy than the process used to produce synthetic virgin polyester fibres.
Factories manufacture this type of material by sorting and melting plastic waste products and breaking them up into small polyester chips.
They then melt the chips and spin them into a recycled fibre. We use this fibre to make all sorts of material items.
For more information on Sustainable Fabric and Materials read our go-to guide.
The 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge
Yes, we want to produce more recycled polyester. But we would like this material to be made from more sustainable materials. As a result, the 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge was set up, an initiative that aims for more manufacturers to use this more sustainable fabric than regular, synthetic polyester.
In April, the Textile Exchange teamed up with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action to create the Recycled Polyester challenge to move the market towards creating far more recycled polyester than regular material, and in this way reduce the fabric “industry’s reliance on fossil-based resources”.
Their reason? Polyester comprises in the region of “80% of all synthetic fibre use, and is used widely in clothing, accessories, home furnishings, and footwear”. They want to “lead the industry away from fossil-based polyester”, and are thus incentivising the challenge to “support the fashion and textiles industry in switching to fibres and materials that have better environmental and social outcomes than their conventional alternatives.”
“We want to encourage the use of recycled or regenerative materials and let no new virgin fossil-based fibres enter the system,” they explain. To do this, the challenge asks manufacturers to “commit to sourcing from 45% to 100% of their polyester from recycled sources”. In this way, they aim to combat new fossil-based synthetic material from entering the system.
Certification Standards for Recycled Material
To be considered high quality and environmentally friendly, a fabric has to meet certain certification regulations. These include the GRS (Global Recycled Standard) that ensures the fibres meet certain criteria, and the Oeko-Tex 100 Standard.
The Global Recycled Standard involves following strict chemical order in manufacturing recycled polyester. The manufacturer also has to follow best practices regarding social and environmental responsibility.
Under the Oeko-Tex100 Standard, manufacturing recycled polyester fibres requires using fabric that is free of chemicals. Also, the material produced cannot include substances that may harm the environment and the health of human beings.
Read our guide to Material Certifications here.
Benefits of Using Less Synthetic Material
· We believe sustainable polyester material is affordable.
· A fashion brand will happily choose polyester, because it is so durable.
· Brands often make clothing for children and infants out of sustainable recycled polyester. It's popular because it is soft, lightweight, and gentle on the skin. This material is also used to make swimsuits, as it is resistant to UV rays.
· For industrial use, polyester is an excellent choice. These fabrics are very long-lasting and can be resistant to fire and insects.
· More eco-friendly reprocessed polyester is another big plus. Plastic pollution is a major environmental issue.
Producing this particular textile using recycled fabrics offers those products a second life. This means that the product doesn’t end up in landfills.
Also, the production process uses less energy.
· Good news – printing on recycled material requires a water-free heat transfer process, which is eco-friendly.
Why Choose This Textile?
· Recycling polyester accounts for a lot of the fashion clothing children and adults wear, including the high fashion industry, every popular leisure apparel brand and workwear.
· Because of its durability, this textile is a smart choice for sportswear (including sports shoes). We also use it as linings for coats and other outdoor garments.
· One can transform this versatile material into all sorts of custom homeware items like cushions, curtains, aprons, tea towels and blankets. (See our fabulous selection of ready-made homeware items from maakeHome!)
We also use this more eco-friendly material to create fashionable soft furnishings such as linen, tableware, comforters and bedspreads. (See more of the ready-made homeware items we offer from maakeHome!)
For more inspiration on New Life for Old Fabrics, check out this interesting piece.
Fabric Printing with maake
You're in for a treat when you with maake on this versatile fabric, especially if you create your own design and print it on recycled polyester.
The results are exceptional. The colours are bright and have extremely vivid saturated tints.
They don’t fade after washing, and there’s a sharpness of detail that makes the design stand out.
Read all about The Eco-Friendly Fabrics UK Businesses Choose for Their Products, Recycled Polyester included.
And if you’re running a small business yourself, find out Why your Business Should be Eco-Friendly.
The best fashion fabrics choices in the UK: we choose the best dress fabric
High Quality Printed Swimwear Fabric Choices: What to Choose for Swimsuit Fabrics
The comprehensive apron guide
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