Fashion for Good launches project to scale polyester recycling

Dutch innovation platform Fashion for Good has announced the launch of its Full Circle Textiles Project - Polyester, with a goal to scale chemical recycling technologies and encourage financing and implementation into the wider industry.

According to the organisation, polyester makes up 52 percent of the global fibre market, making it the most common fibre in the world. It also represents 73 percent of landfilled or incinerated textiles, causing concerns due to its inability to break down in the environment.

However, Fashion for Good reckons it sees a solution in the form of chemical recycling.

“Textile recycling is a key focus for Fashion for Good,” said Katrin Ley, the organisation’s managing director, in a release. “With the success of the first Full Circle Textiles Project, and proof that a galvanised consortium of stakeholders from across the industry can truly shift the needle, we can now turn our attention to applying these learnings and steps to scale to another critical area; textile-to-textile polyester recycling.”

For the project, Fashion for Good’s partnering stakeholders include brands, innovators and supply chain partners, each tasked with helping to scale. It has also asked global innovators, working on polyester chemical recycling, to participate in the 18-month project, requesting the development of recycled polyester which will eventually be used for garment production.

The new polyester-based project links to its past Full Circle Textiles initiative, launched in 2020, centred around scalable solutions for cellulosic chemical recycling. Participating innovators validated their technologies and ultimately produce garments for brand partners PVH Corp. and Kering Group.