Recycled cotton is the focus of new Fashion For Good project
Sustainability-focused innovation hub Fashion for Good has announced a new mechanical recycling project for textiles called Cotton Reloop Matrix.
It called the project “a cross-industry initiative that will map and physically validate” the quality of commercially available recycled cotton yarns. Validation will be against brand specifications.
The result, it has said, will be to give the industry “a data-backed overview of how quality, price and recycled content intersect”.
Partners for the project include Arvind, Bestseller, C&A, Interloop, Reformation, Stahi and Uster.
Cotton accounts for 19% of global fibre production and a core part of the material mix, Fashion For Good said.
It went on to say that although alternative recycling pathways exist to use cotton-rich textile waste, these processes “do not make a cotton output”.
For this reason, it said mechanical recycling remained “a crucial pathway” for creating recycled cotton yarns and fabrics.
Through the process, textile waste is shredded and re-opened into loose fibres that can be respun into yarn. However, shredding shortens and weakens the fibres, so only 45% or 50% of the input survives as usable material. The rest is lost as short fibres and processing waste, and because the surviving fibres are shorter than virgin cotton, spinners can only blend a limited share back into new yarn. “In practice, that caps most yarns at around 10% recycled content,” the Amsterdam-based innovation hub said. “Any higher and the fabric is not durable enough for commercial use.”
Its managing director, Katrin Ley, commented that people in the industry have talked about recycled cotton “as a scale-ready solution” for years, but she insisted the industry had been working “from fragmented data and siloed testing”.
She said the new project was about “closing the gap with hard evidence”.
It will achieve this by plotting real recycler capabilities against real brand quality targets, and by co-developing the operational standards to support them.
Fashion for Good will map what recyclers can produce today against what brands need. From this, it will produce a “quality matrix” to show at a glance where recycled cotton is ready for commercial use and where targeted innovation can extend its reach.
In a second phase, the Cotton Reloop Matrix project will move “from the map to the mill”. Selected recyclers will work with the project partners, will then produce 10 demonstrator fabrics and run a series of trials.
There will then be a final report to set out the data and show what is needed to scale recycled cotton adoption across the industry.
