End of Use
The end-of-use stage focuses on extending the life of materials and garments by enabling technologies and infrastructure that can redirect garments into reuse and recycling. This supply chain step involves innovation in sorting, chemical recycling processes, and waste match-making platforms. Directing textile waste coming from factories and households into new use phases allows the industry to reduce waste and reuse materials to build a regenerative system.
Projects

How Can Companies Recycle Clothes Back Into Clothes?
Polyester is in almost all of your clothing, and it’s almost impossible to recycle. Some innovators are looking beyond turning plastic bottles into fabric.

Meet the Innovator: Infinited Fiber Company

Fashion for Good Sorting for Circularity Advances into the US Market

Will We Ever Be Able to Recycle Our Clothes Like an Aluminum Can?
Fashion for Good innovator Renewcell’s new factory is one of the first steps toward a system that turns old clothes into new high-quality clothes made entirely with recycled fabric, addressing the mountains of textile waste accumulating worldwide.

New Cotton Project Launches Exhibit at the Fashion for Good Museum

Creating a Circular System to Accelerate Textile Recycling

Recycling of textile waste in Europe could generate €74m per year, report
The Sorting for Circularity Europe Project highlights the significant opportunity for circularity, with only 2% of post-consumer textiles diverted to fibre-to-fibre recycling today.

Sorting For Circularity Europe: Project findings highlight immense opportunity to accelerate textile recycling
Innovators

Matoha
Matoha specialises in automated sorting solutions through near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Their technology enables the accurate identification and sorting of materials, contributing to better diversion of textile waste feedstock to the recycling industry. Founded in 2018 (UK).

Protein Evolution
Founded by a team of scientists and engineers, Protein Evolution uses a combination of biology and chemistry to transform waste into high-value products. The company’s goal is to unlock the potential of waste to be a valuable resource, in a bid to help the materials industry transition to a lower-carbon, more circular economy. (US)

Re:lastane
Re:lastane focuses on the separation and recycling of polyester and polyester blended fabrics. They have developed a patent pending “Relastane” polyester recycling system, which realises the separation of polyester fibres from cotton, nylon, spandex and other blended fibres. (China)

DePoly
DePoly’s advanced recycling technology converts unsorted, dirty end-of-life plastics and fibres into virgin-grade raw materials. They focus on items that cannot typically be recycled due to complex blends, dyes, contaminants, etc. Their low-energy process uses simple, green chemicals and operates at room temperature, all without the need to pre-wash, pre-sort, or separate out other materials. (Switzerland)

Ioncell
Ioncell Oy develops patented Ioncell® technology, which transforms cellulosic bio-materials into new, high-performance textile fibres in a sustainable way. Their technology can improve the quality when textile waste is recycled into new fibres, therefore supporting the inevitable transformation to a circular economy in the clothing and textile industry. (Finland)

Refiberd
Refiberd offer an integrated automated sorting and chemical recycling technology to deal with blended post-consumer textile waste. By utilising a combination of spectroscopy, machine learning and image processing for sorting and custom cellulose dissolution for chemical recycling, Refiberd’s technology can reduce material waste to landfill and lower CO2 emissions. Founded in 2020 (US).

IDELAM
IDELAM’s technology enables delamination of multi-material products or waste, such as jackets and footwear, through processes utilising supercritical CO2. The disassembly of such products allows for more effective recycling and reuse of substrates. Founded in 2019 (France).

Premirr Plastics
Premirr Plastics have developed a continuous flow-through (CFT) system to recycle PET materials into a BHET monomer that can then be used to manufacture PET products containing recycled content. The technology enables closed-loop polyester textile recycling, both reducing textile waste and reliance on petroleum-derived virgin PET. Founded in 2015 (US).
Latest

Meet the Innovator: Ecovative

The Fashion Charter is on track to miss its key goal. What now?
In a recent report, the UN Fashion Charter said there’s still a long way to go to meet its net-zero emissions goal, and signatories are dropping. It’s raised questions about impact and accountability.

Dress made of orange peel at the GROW exhibition in Budapest
The GROW pop-up exhibition of the Fashion for Good Museum is open in Hungary until 25 March. The interactive exhibition showcases clothes and accessories made from sustainable bio-materials such as banana fibre, orange and coconut shells, and is located at the Budapest Metropolitan University. [HUNGARIAN ARTICLE]

Smart Creation, the podcast. Episode 54
In this new episode of the podcast Smart Creation, Kathleen Rademan, Director of the Innovation Platform at Fashion for Good tells us how the platform works, how it is financed, its innovative projects and the particularity of their museum.