UK based ‘Worn Again’, with a vision to eradicate textile and clothing waste from the global apparel and textile industry has joined forces with apparel retailer H&M and lifestyle Group, Kering.
Worn Again which wants to make continual recycling of textiles a sustainable reality, with the help of the two companies, plans to bring a revolutionary innovation in clothing production and recycling.
In 2014, the global production of polyester filament and cotton fibre was approximately 65 million tons and in 2020, the global demand for these fibres is estimated to be 90 million tons.
To address this, and the growing issue of clothes-to-landfill, Worn Again’s recycling technology is the first of its kind able to separate and extract polyester and cotton from old or end-of-use clothing and textiles.
Once separated, the aim is for this unique process to enable the ‘recaptured’ polyester and cellulose from cotton to be spun into new fabric creating a ‘circular resource model’ for textiles.
This new technology addresses major barriers in textile-to-textile recycling, namely on how to separate blended fibre garments; and how to separate dyes and other contaminants from polyester and cellulose.