Fabric Innovations in Polyester Recycling

It takes between 20 and 200 years to recycle polyester fabric. This is why global governments are scrambling to find methods of manufacturing materials with similar properties that won’t harm the environment so drastically. That’s because polyester is a popular fabric for athleisure garments – it stretches, stays dry and is durable. 

Countries are also investigating more sustainable methods of manufacturing and recycling other synthetic fabrics. They currently have stricter laws in place regarding sustainable manufacturing and waste management practices.

Why Polyester Recycling is Important

There are many reasons it’s crucial to recycle polyester and other materials in the UK. Let’s check them out:

·      Only 1% of fabrics in the UK are recycled, according to statistics in The Green Business Journal.

·      Additionally, people produce more than half a million tonnes of textile waste from polyester in the UK.

·      Another fascinating fact: polyester is used in clothing and manufactured into containers for food and liquids. It’s also used in ‘thermoforming’, a process using heat to make a particular item more pliable and mould it into a specific shape.

·      Until recently, we had no polyester fabric recycling systems in the UK. This left us two options – incineration or ending up in landfill. Now there is a recycling plant in the UK – read all about Re:claim below, a British workwear clothes brand’s innovation.

What Recycling Polyester Does

Recycling Polyester is Energy-Efficient

Recycling polyester uses less energy than producing the fabric; this is why recycling is an energy-efficient alternative.

Polyester Recycling Reduces Carbon Emissions

The polyester recycling process is sustainable as it reduces CO2  emissions. This has a positive impact on the environment.

This Recycling Process Consumes Less Energy

When polyester is recycled, less energy is used in the process. This is a sustainable method of recycling compared to other textile recycling processes. 

You can read our guide to Recycled Polyester here!

Innovative Ways to Recycle Polyester Fabric

Let’s look at some forward-thinking methods of recycling polyester that are currently in play:

World’s First PET Biorecycling Plant

Last year, biochemistry startup Carbios created the first PET Depolymerisation Plant in Longlaville, France. Its recycling process enables PET plastic and textile waste to be recycled without solvents. It uses an enzyme called ‘Cutinase’ to “break down polyester material found in textile waste, including blended fabrics”. As the process is on a molecular level, it creates virgin quality fabric that can be recycled several times. Brands currently collaborating with Carbios include PUMA and Salomon.

Local Innovations Go Way Back

In 2023, UK designer Stella McCartney partnered with the biological recycling brand Protein Evolution, taking excess cut-off polyester and nylon fabrics from her previous collections and using ‘enzymatic technology’ to recycle these fabrics. The result is a new fibre made from this textile and plastic waste. The brand is currently testing how to use this fibre to make new clothing, accessories and other recyclable products.

UK's First Polyester Recycling Plant

A collaboration between the Salvation Army Trading Company and UK workwear clothing brand Project Plan B, Project Re:claim is attempting to solve the UK’s polyester textile waste problem. Project Re:claim has partnered with the Circular Textiles Foundation, a non-profit organisation that focuses on creating circularity for the UK textiles industry.

The plant, in Kettering, Northamptonshire, which opened in 2024, recycles post-consumer clothing and other materials into fabric for the fashion and textile industries. Its process recycles polyester fabric into rPET pellets made from textiles in a similar way to the method used to transform plastic bottles into recycled polyester fabric (rPET). “These pellets use almost 10 times less energy (11%) compared to pellets made from virgin polyester,” Re:claim explains.

Learn about our maakeLess Waste Initiative here.

Brands Transforming Waste Into Virgin Fibre

Netherlands company CuRe Technology has collaborated with NHL Stenden University to create a low-energy method to endlessly recycle polyester, including bottles, carpets and clothing into high-quality, ready-to-use Recycled Polyester fabric. They are sharing their knowledge with other global companies to create a positive environmental impact on fabrics.

Refiberd is a US-based business comprising a team of women. They use a method of transforming textiles into new, reusable materials with the help of AI, robotics and green chemical recycling. “From our deep research backgrounds in artificial intelligence and textile engineering, we believe in the power of technology to unlock a 100% circular economy,” they tell us.

Popular sportswear brand Lululemon has teamed up with Samsara Eco, a recycling textile business, to create infinitely recycled polyester and nylon fabrics from Lululemon’s sportswear clothing. This is just one way the popular athleisure brand hopes to achieve its goal of producing 100% of its products with sustainably recycled products by 2030.

We created a comprehensive guide on how to Create Sustainable Fabrics From Textile Waste. Take a look for some inspiration.

Important Iniatives

The Full Circle Textiles Project was created in 2021 to focus on polyester chemical recycling for the fashion industry. Retail fashion and athleisure brands such as Adidas, Target and several others have banded together with innovators, funders and supply chain partners to create an awareness of the importance of recycling polyester and foster financing in recycling polyester materials.

The 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge is being run by the Textile Exchange, this challenge encourages businesses and design brands to use recycled fabrics instead of synthetic polyester. They hope to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, plastic waste and resource consumption. The challenge is concentrating on creating a more circular economy and assisting the fabric industry to be more sustainable. This challenge had set a goal: that 45% of all polyester be produced using only recycled materials by 2025. This was in the hope of substantially reducing the amount of virgin polyester being created from petroleum.

Project Re:Claim has been mentioned earlier here. It’s a partnership between the Salvation Army Trading Co (SATCoL) and Project Plan B, that has a specialised focus on textile-to-textile technology system that it uses to process used clothing and fabrics. Their recycling plant, which is based in Kettering, produces rPET pellets from clothing waste. It is the first commercial-scale polyester recycling system in Europe, and won the 2024 Plastic Industries Award in December last year.

4. Other advancements in chemical recycling technologies, according to the Textile Exchange, include degrading plastic waste and reusing it to make new plastics or as an alternative form of fuel. Polyester is being broken down into enzymes by companies like Evoralis in the hope of revolutionising plastic recycling. These innovative methods are being carried out at the University of Cambridge’s Hollfrelder Lab, in the hope of “paving the way for a truly circular economy”.

Some Good News

Hopefully some of these innovative methods will be responsible for transforming waste into a valuable resource and lessening the fashion industry’s impact on the environment. We remain ever hopeful that the more industries and brands become aware of the sustainability problem, so that we can address it and find ways to be more sustainable going forward.

To spur you on, why not read all about the way maake focuses on sustainability and our initiatives in the workplace.