Football jerseys, sporting event banners and uniforms are stacked ready to be pumped into a machine that melts them down for recycling into new clothing.
In a world first in Kettering, Northamptonshire, the Re:claim Project is taking the technology used to recycle plastic bottles and adapting it to reprocess polyester textiles into pellets that can be turned into yarn for new clothing.
The joint venture between the Salvation Army and recycling specialist Project Plan B uses items from the charity’s sorting centre, which separates between 10 and 20 per cent of donated items that cannot be resold depending on the type of fabric . Infrared sensors select wool, cotton and nylon items that can be sent to experimental reprocessors and yarn manufacturers around the world, including polyester for the pellet making machine.
Project Re:claim hopes to recycle 2,500 tonnes of waste this year and double that figure by 2025. It is working with large retailers including Tesco and John Lewis, as well as specialist manufacturers such as school uniform maker David Luke, who are encouraging suppliers a Use recycled polyester.
The company, funded in part by a government-backed grant, is part of a movement aimed at tackling the huge pile of unwanted and unwearable clothing sent to landfills or incineration each year, and the high carbon emissions of the fashion industry.
In the UK, around half of the 1.45 million tonnes of used textiles generated annually end up in the household bin and the majority are incinerated, according to a report by government recycling body Wrap. Another 650,000 tonnes are sent for reuse or recycling, but most of it goes into the manufacture of products such as mattress fillings or car doors, which are also likely to end up in landfills. Only 20% of used textiles are sold for clothing.
More than 420,000 tons of unwanted items are sent abroad, where they can end their days in unregulated landfills or scattered on the beaches of Ghana and the dunes of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
The industry has been slow to address the issue, with some projects brewing for more than a decade and one major facility recently going bankrupt. However, industry observers say the yarn-used textiles industry is now set for rapid expansion as legislation and consumer pressure combine to force major retailers to act.
“I expect rapid change from here,” says Professor Parik Goswami, director of the technical textiles research center at the University of Huddersfield. “Over the next 10 years we will see an absolute revolution.”
Countries in Africa and Asia that once accepted used clothing from the West are backing away, while retailers’ environmental goals, created under pressure from customers, have begun to gain importance. The change has been accelerated by EU legislation, due next year, under which states must organize separate collection of textiles, and a proposal for brands to pay for waste handling. France and the Netherlands are already taking strict measures on the handling of used textiles.
In the UK, MPs last month began re-examining plans to require retailers and brands to pay for the recycling of used clothing and home textiles. This would be a step forward from the voluntary agreements that already exist, which include the Textiles 2030 agreement to reduce carbon emissions and the ACT UK project to develop materials recycling at a local level.
Marks & Spencer has launched a new initiative with Oxfam seeking donations of unusable items for reprocessing. It plans to recycle at least some of those items into new textiles and recycle others, but not all details have been confirmed.
Earlier this month, H&M told MPs it aimed to recycle half of its materials by 2030, up from just over a fifth today. It wants all of its polyester to be recycled, up from just under 80% last year. Currently, all that polyester comes from plastic bottles, but the company has formed a joint venture, Syre, which it says will establish a model polyester textile recycling center in the US this year and 11 more by 2032.
Turning old clothes into yarn is not new: shoddy was the name for wool fabric made from yarn spun from shredded textiles in the 19th century. In 2011, M&S worked with Oxfam and a factory in Italy to collect and reprocess cashmere knitwear into coats, but the trial quietly ended after it could not find enough unwanted knitwear to reprocess.
Today, many high-tech options are emerging around the world. The Södra forestry group in Sweden converts a mixture of used cotton and wood pulp into fiber; Recover in Spain recycles used cotton fibers into yarn and has recently expanded with a new facility in Bangladesh, while German chemical manufacturer BASF has teamed up with Zara owner Inditex to trial nylon recycling. Finland’s Infinited Fiber, which has trial plants converting cotton into a cellulose-based fibre, recently raised $43m (£34m) to help build a commercial-scale plant.
Coming full circle, in Yorkshire, wool recycling company iinouiio (It’s Never Over Until It’s Done) began using traditional equipment once used to make poor quality wool yarns to recycle luxury wool yarns in 2019. In 2022, partnered with Camira, a global company. fabric manufacturer, to provide recycled wool to retailers and is taking textiles from the Salvation Army.
However, progress may not be easy. The future of Renewcell in Sweden, the world’s first commercial-scale recycling plant that converts textiles into yarn-ready pulp, is at stake. The company called in administrators in February after being hit by a fall in the price of virgin viscose. The administrators are considering two or three bids for the business and are hopeful of securing a deal as a going concern.
Renewcell’s problems highlight the difficulties these experimental technologies face in securing enough funding to overcome failures in a highly complex supply chain and competition from often cheaper virgin materials.
Textile-to-textile recycling needs a reliable supply of used textiles processed to reduce pollution, a yarn ready to purchase the recycled material and fabric, and clothing brands prepared to use a product that may not meet the criteria of the materials with which they normally work.
Back in Kettering, they are struggling with all those challenges. Majonne Frost, director of environment and sustainability at Salvation Army Trading Company, says she has been testing different types of raw materials (from sports equipment to hospital curtains) for the Re:claim recycling machines. She has also spent time persuading brands and manufacturers to change buttons and trim so that a uniform, for example, is made entirely of polyester and can be fed into the machine without the need for complex processes.
Challenges range from dealing with contamination, such as human hair, which can dye the pellets, making them more difficult to dye any color, to the additional costs involved in shipping the pellets back to the spinners, who typically have their headquarters in Asia or, at the closest, Turkey.
“We are developing the market. “This is a pioneering technology in the world and people are not used to using this product, so it is about raising awareness among companies and collaborating to incorporate recycled polyester into their supply chains,” he says. “There are a lot of conversations going on.”
Goswami says the technology exists to process used clothing and what is needed is cooperation and investment to make this happen.
“People take it seriously,” he says. “If we’re going to (achieve) net zero emissions, we don’t have much of a choice.”
