BE AWARE OF GREENWASHING

Using the words “recycled” and “circular” has become very common in all communication, often even interlinked. However, claims must be thorough and create an honest representation of both processes. There is a difference between recycled and recycling.

According to the European Commission directive 2008/98/ EC, “recycling means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials, or substances, whether for the original or other purposes.”

Today, less than one percent of textile waste undergoes fiber-to-fiber recycling. However, recycling offers an enormous resource potential. A McKinsey report states that an estimated 70 percent of textile waste could be processed via fiber-to-fiber recycling. The remaining 30 percent would require open-loop recycling (isolation or cleaning products) or other solutions like producing syngas through thermochemical recycling. Additionally, a thorough circular economy creates new jobs in the textile industry, but also ensures that companies are within sustainability legislations to be launched in the US and EU.

There are three types of textile recycling: thermomechanical recycling, mechanical recycling, and chemical recycling.

Thermomechanical recycling is mostly used for thermoplastic synthetic fibers like polyester and polyamide. This process is based on increasing the temperature to transform textiles, so it is vital to use it only with fibers with similar reactions to heat and therefore cannot be used for combination materials including, for example, cotton.

The most widely used recycling process in the denim industry is mechanical recycling, for 100% cotton, 100% polyester, 100% wool, or 100% poly cotton compositions. The French closed-loop textile recycling network Weturn mechanically recycles unsold goods, either knitted or woven fabrics, which must consist of natural fibers, into new yarns and fabrics. Their denim line develops fabrics with up to 30% recycled content, where recycled cotton fibers are blended with virgin fibers to ensure the quality of the fabrics while ensuring recyclability. Orta Denim mechanically recycles cotton from their own pre-consumer waste with a perspective on eco-designed denim. Recycled yarns are mixed with longer virgin fibers to compensate for the quality of the fibers and keep the environmental impact (waste generated and energy consumption) of the spinning process equivalent to conventional yarns. This in turn can then be mechanically recycled again.

Some of the limitations of mechanical recycling include textiles with complex fiber blends such as fabrics with more than 5% elastane, or with lurex. Sometimes, in an effort to be more sustainable, companies include different sustainable ingredients in one product. However, to be circular, these finished products should likewise be recyclable.

Chemical recycling is very new and used for more complex compositions, especially for textiles with binary blends such as cotton/polyester or wool/polyamide. There are even projects using it for the separation of elastane in binary blends with polyester or cotton.

Obviously, finishes and additives such as coatings or resins can make recycling much more challenging as, to be truly circular, all ingredients must be compatible with existing recycling technologies. A recent study on chemical recycling by Refashion highlighted that mixtures of ternary or even quaternary materials make fiber separation and recycling very difficult, unless one of the fibers dominates. The most frequent blend encountered is cotton/polyester/elastane, for which, to date, there are no chemical recycling processes available due to its complexity.

Isko has developed a recycling technology for fabrics containing cotton and polyester at any percentage, called RE&UP. Depending on the composition of the textile, it uses either mechanical recycling technology for cotton-rich textiles or thermochemical for polyester-rich textiles, although it cannot recycle fabrics with more than 2% elastane.

While these efforts are part of the textile industry's movement towards sustainability, the recycling of such complex blends remains a critical challenge and is mostly not possible, reflecting the necessity for ongoing innovation and development in textile recycling technologies. This is additional to limitations such as industrial infrastructure, collection systems, and sorting of discards. Because one question remains: How do you bring the millions of meters back to a plant which can potentially recycle exactly that material blend?

Consumer education is indispensable in the fight against greenwashing, which means responsible and transparent communication is essential. The French AGEC law defined "recyclable" as the process where a product must be able to be collected, sorted, not contain elements that disturb the sorting, the recycled material must constitute at least 50% of the mass of waste it came from and must have the potential to be industrially recycled. This is a good guideline to understand: is that product helping to establish a circular economy?

Following the acceptance of this definition, marketing efforts and product descriptions also need to be amended, so that designers, brands, and consumers can be allowed to make an informed buying decision.