Textile Sorting

As the circular economy gains traction, Ukrainian firm Re:inventex is emerging as a key player in scalable textile recycling through mechanical innovation and pragmatic adaptation. The company’s Development Manager, Tetiana Pushkarova, explains how they navigate fibre challenges, material complexity, and regulatory uncertainty—while building real-world recycling solutions that connect industry, policy and sustainability goals across Europe.

As circularity becomes central to the textile industry, French recycling innovator Cetia is streamlining disassembly and sorting through cutting-edge automation. Leading this transformation is Director Chloé Salmon Legagneur, whose team is developing intelligent systems that dismantle shoes, sort garments, and prepare materials for high-quality recycling—critical for scaling circular solutions across both footwear and fashion supply chains.

The US’ measurement institute could have made textile sorting a tad easier with the development of a database that contains the molecular “fingerprints” of 64 different fabric types.

Fabric blends in clothing could soon be sorted easy if a proposal by a multi-disciplinary team of students to use an electron beam to segregate different fabric components through electrostatic separation finds takers.

Korean scientists are working to build multi-scale facilities for the chemical recycling of clothing waste, especially polyester, which can then be used as clean feedstock as the sorting method eliminates most organic impurities including intractable dyes.