Polyester is estimated to count for 52% of the global fiber market and represents a huge environmental problem as this petroleum-base fiber is not biodegradable. According to Fashion For Good, an Amsterdam-based platform encouraging environmentally friendly practices in fashion, chemical recycling could be a solution to manage the volumes of polyester textile waste that is produced every year.

For these reasons, it has launched The Full Circle Textiles Project, an initiative focused on polyester recycling that brings together diverse stakeholders including brands, innovators, supply chain partners and funders.

Also on board are the Laudes Foundation and C&A, Adidas, Bestseller, PVH, Target, Zalando, together with Arvind Limited, the fabrics' division of W. L. Gore & Associates, and Teijin Frontier Europe, which recently joined Fashion for Good.






Fashion for Good has recruited promising chemical polyester recycling companies from around the world to join the project. These include CuRe Technology, Garbo, Gr3n and PerPETual, which will recycle polyester from textile waste over the course of 18 months for later use in fabric and apparel production. The results will be evaluated by participating brand and supply chain partners. Chemical processes could recycle virgin-quality textile waste and process a wider range of textile types, offering huge potential to close the loop, according to Fashion for Good.

The new project builds on the Full Circle Textiles Project, launched in September 2020, which sought commercially viable and scalable solutions for the chemical recycling of cellulose and the production of new synthetic cellulose fibers from cotton and cotton blend waste. The four innovators selected at the time, Circ, EVRNU, Infinited Fiber Company and Renewcell, were able to validate their technologies and produce garments for brand partners PVH and Kering to their quality requests. The next phase of the project will focus on scaling these solutions for polyester recycling.

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