The EU-funded New Cotton Project is all set to ride on Infinited Fiber’s Infinna fibre this autumn with commercial garment runs for Adidas and H&M. The project is already midway through, and the garments will be the first to be produced. A white paper on the subject will also be released by Aalto University.
Midway through: The project’s mid-way point sees the consortium celebrate the successful implementation of the entire value chain, from textile sorting to the production of garment samples.
- The textile sorting and mechanical processing phase of the project has been completed by Frankenhuis, which analysed the fabric composition of sorted textiles and explored pre-processing techniques to identify the correct feedstocks for Infinited.
- The initial steps were supported by REvolve Waste, which is mapping the location and content of textile waste across Europe.
Going beyond cotton: In November 2020, twelve players in the fashion and textiles industry came together to prove that circular and sustainable fashion is not only an ambition, but can be achieved as well.
- Over a three-year period, which has just crossed the midway mark, textile waste would be collected, sorted and regenerated into Infinited Fiber's unique, cellulose-based textile fibres.
- The fibres will be used to create different types of fabrics for clothing that will be designed, manufactured and sold by global brand Adidas and companies in the H&M Group.
- At the end-of-use, apparel take-back programmes will collect the clothing to determine the next phase in their lifecycle.
- Clothing that can no longer be worn will be returned for regeneration into new fibres, further contributing to a circular economy in which textiles never go to waste, but are reused, recycled or regenerated into new garments instead.
What lies ahead: The process has so far highlighted a number of challenges and opportunities for the future of closed-loop end-of-life solutions in textiles:
- Sorting for recycling is a key to empowering circularity within the industry, but there are many challenges and opportunities in this process. Fibre identification technologies have limitations and there is a lack of a unified way to sort. With a unified system, feedstocks will be more consistent and make the best use of the current technology.
- Mandatory reporting requirements for fibre composition in textile products help to assess the recyclability of materials on the market in a more reliable way.
- Designing for circularity and end-of-life solutions is another key – the recyclability of a textile product is determined at the design phase and elastane use, multiple layers of different textiles and unnecessary fibre blends should be minimised.
- New ways of communicating and working through-out the value chain need to be implemented to build closer collaboration between designers, sorting facilities and recycling technologies.
