The push to do this chemically is a response to the shortcomings of other tried and tested strategies. Conventional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding shreds the fibers breakdown. The resulting fabric should be mixed 70 to 80 percent virgin material so that everything made of it does not pill and tear.
A much more widespread strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into modern polyester. Patagonia was a pioneer of this approach in the early 1990s and early this decade, virtually all polyester was recycled comes from old bottles. Today, however, companies increasingly face such challenges lawsuits AND regulatory control from those who would prefer the bottles to turn back into bottles.
Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to the employ of solvents to dissolve fibers into their basic chemical units – the building blocks from which modern fabrics can be spun. At first glance, this is a truly circular solution because it is not reliant on bottles, and proponents claim that it allows used polyester shirts or running shorts to be repeatedly replaced with modern ones without any loss of material quality.
This vision is currently promoted by quick fashion brands such as Gap, H&MAND Levi’smany of which have signed multi-year agreements with several chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “round” polyester from two of them: a Swedish company Acid AND Loop Industry in the USA.
Research confirms some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling produces polyester of its original quality, and at least one method, called methanolysis, maintains that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But they are significant limitations.
Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said chemical recycling of textiles into textiles is still circumscribed by the availability of suitable fabrics. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling could in principle produce a material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, when we talk about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”
In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial waste, which is more uniform than piles of used clothing. The latter can include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex and acrylic, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, threads, labels and zippers. All of these things make chemical recycling much less feasible – at least not without it meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all these contaminants.
“If we wanted this to work, we would have to have clothes… made of 100% polyester and we would have to get rid of a lot of toxic chemicals,” Singla said.
Beth Jensen of the nonprofit Textile Exchange is more hopeful. She said “all solutions” were needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels, including chemical recycling. However, she agreed that creating the infrastructure necessary for companies to accept used clothing and employ technologies such as methanolysis to produce modern clothing is still a long way off. Moreover, it is not known who will build it. Companies like Nike? Rules? Recyclers? Some combination of these entities working together?