International

A T-shirt for the Circular Economy

Apparel represents about 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Our addiction to polyester clothes is one reason it’s so high. Several apparel manufacturers, including Patagonia and Puma, collaborated to crest a recycling process based on enzymes to turn old clothes into new. The process worked so a factory is being built in France to see if it can be taken to scale.

The apparel companies provided a wide range of fabrics to test, including those with cotton/poly blends and waterproof coatings, things that mechanical recycling can’t handle.

Novonesis of Denmark sells Carbios the enzymes, issued by the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis. In the brewery-like Carbios pilot plant, the custom enzymes munch the polyester polymer down into a monomer. This isolates polyester from fabric blends, such as poly-cotton. That’s important and novel, because it’s impossible with mechanical recycling. Next, Carbios’s partner companies build the monomer back up into a polymer, then spin it into fiber and make new fabric.

Carbios is building what it says is its first and last plant. It wants to sell the technology, not run recycling plants. But they’re siting it next to a PET plant so its product can go right back into new products.

Carbios is building a new plant in Longlaville, France, to recycle 50,000 metric tons of PET each year, the equivalent of 300 million T-shirts. It’s 500 meters from a PET plant.

https://trellis.net/article/this-polyester-t-shirt-can-be-recycled-forever-if-french-startup-carbios-has-its-way/

It remains to be seen if the process can compete on cost compared to using petroleum. And whether we can collect a lot more of our old clothes. And it doesn’t solve the microplastics problem. But it’s a positive step.

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