Imagine a textile recycling system with easy drop-offs; processing facilities with machines that remove hardware and trims; automated sorters that quickly scan and sort items by fiber content; and a technology that dissolves fabrics down to their basic chemical components, which then are re-spun into virgin-quality fibers. Imagine this process can be infinitely repeated, using non-toxic solvents that are re-captured and re-used at the end of the cycle.  

This is what’s known as a closed-loop system, and it’s the vision we should all look to as a long-term solution to combat mounting textile waste that continues to increase annually. 

Right now, textile recycling falls into two broad categories – mechanical and chemical. And the systems currently in place throughout the world largely consist of the former.

The latter, however, represents a hopeful frontier for creating scaled, affordable, closed-loop systems that would shift us away from current, unsustainable raw material extraction processes: growing cotton, harvesting trees for man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCFs), and extracting petroleum for synthetics. 

The automated sorting and chemical technologies exist (the hardware removal does not yet), and a number of innovative start-ups are almost ready for prime time. Some are even at limited commercial stages. (For a list, see below.)

But commercialization at scale could devolve into a hot mess of non-standardized, competing technologies and precious time wasted waiting to see who wins the market game, unless public and private sector interests can be guided by coordinated, strategic planning, with long-term collective prosperity – not short-term profit only – as the goal. Collaborative efforts will be integral to building the necessary infrastructure, establishing rules of the game, and helping create markets and incentives.

Here are a few key points to understand:

1. Chemical recycling has the potential to solve a known problem in the mechanical textile recycling world: fiber blends like cotton poly (80% of the market) are hard to separate mechanically.

2. Mechanical recycling (of cotton) yields less than optimal fibers for re-spinning, which means they must be mixed with virgin fibers, or else have limited end use (e.g., fillers, rags).

3. Cotton, itself a natural cellulosic, can never be recycled back into long-staple fibered cotton. But it can be recycled into cellulosic pulp.

Cellulosic pulp is already the intermediate stage in an established textile manufacturing process known as “the viscose method.” It’s what you get when wood is dissolved by chemical magic into liquid form, before being spun into fibers, to yield fabrics like viscose (rayon), modal, and lyocell.

Chemical textile recycling methods essentially replicate the viscose method, with post-consumer textiles (PCT) replacing virgin wood or bamboo.

Similar to paper-making, it’s the intermediate pulp stage between original solid input and final solid output that allows for potentially infinite recycling.

What sets some of these new technologies apart, however, is their ability to separate poly from cotton (or synthetic from cellulosic) during the liquification process. Poly is turned back into reusable PET pellets or poly fibers, while the cotton or cellulosic goes on to become cellulosic pulp.

Once spun from pulp back to solid fibers, the resulting material may be cotton-like, or it can be tailored to have other properties.

In a circular economy, recycled cellulosic pulp could become the building block of a potentially infinite variety of MMCF textiles. And sustainability advocates, both consumer and industry, should prepare to embrace the advent of MMCFs as an eventual replacement to cotton.

It may help, then, to think of the two – chemical recycling and man-made cellulosic fibers – as going hand-in-hand, but with a catch: the problems inherent in traditional, linear-derived MMCFs, like deforestation and biodiversity loss, are averted. Safe solvent chemicals and a closed-loop re-capture technique like that used by Lenzing in its TENCEL™ and REFIBRA™ production will also be critical.

Here is a snapshot of some of the major chemical recycling innovators (and two automated sorters):