Nike World Cup uniforms made from recycled textiles won’t solve fashion waste

The push to do this through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they have tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding results in fibers separation. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material So that anything made with it does not clump or tear.

The most common strategy involves converting discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia Pioneering this approach In the early 1990s, and by the beginning of this decade almost all recycled polyester had been converted into material Sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies are increasingly facing Lawsuits and Regulatory audit From those who would rather see bottles turned into bottles again.

Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to the use of solvents to dissolve fibers into their basic chemical units, which are building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On the face of it, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t rely on bottles, and proponents say it can turn used polyester T-shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, without losing fabric quality.

This is the vision that is now being promoted by fast fashion brands such as gap, H&Mand LevyMany of them have signed multi-year agreements with a few startups in the chemical recycling space. Last fall, Nike agreed to acquire “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish company sour and Ring industries In the United States.

The research bears some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce high-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is able to maintain that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there is Major restrictions.

Recycling chemicals from textiles to textiles remains limited by the availability of the right fabric to work with, said Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted waste streams rich in polyester, chemical recycling could, in principle, produce materials with similar properties to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is more complicated.”

In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scrap, which is more uniform than piles of used clothing. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex and acrylic, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, threads, labels and zippers. All of these things make chemical recycling much less feasible — at least not without it Accurate sorting And repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all those contaminants.

“If we want this to work, our clothes … will have to be made of 100 percent polyester, and we will need to get rid of a lot of toxic chemicals,” Singla said.

Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more optimistic. She said that “all solutions”, including chemical recycling, are necessary to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that creating the infrastructure needed for businesses to accept used clothes and use techniques such as methanolysis to turn them into new clothes is still a ways off. In addition, it is not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Is there a mix of those entities working collaboratively?