Fashion for Good has launched the Full Circle Textiles Project: Scaling Innovations in Cellulosic Recycling – a first-of-its-kind consortium of industry giants to address the issue of clothing in landfills.
The project will focus on cellulosic fibres and aims to validate and eventually scale promising technologies in chemical recycling from a select group of innovators.
The organisations that are partaking in the project to explore disruptive solutions in terms of creating new fibres and garments from used clothing include Kering, PVH Corp, Target, Laudes Foundation and Birla Cellulose.
The project will investigate economic viability and scalable solutions for cellulosic chemical recycling to enable a closed loop system converting textile waste, of cotton and cotton-blend materials, to produce new man-made cellulosic fibres.
Conducted over an 18-month-period, the project will enable partners to collaborate with innovators Phoenxt, Evrnu, Infinited Fiber Company, Renewcell and Tyton BioSciences to recognise the potential of their technologies that are still in nascent stages.
The recycled content generated by four of these innovators will be sent to Birla Cellulose’s state-of-the-art pilot plants to be converted to high-quality cellulosic fibres.
From there, fibres will be sent to the project partners’ supply chains to be manufactured into garments.
The project will provide a wholesome assessment of innovator’s technologies, environmental impact, recycled output and produced garments so as to determine how best to support and scale these solutions.
The formation of this targeted consortium expands on previous pilot project structures and is a novel attempt to collaborate with multiple stakeholders in the fashion industry, to create a streamlined ecosystem that drives a structured innovation process and ultimately, industry-wide adoption.
Based in Amsterdam, Fashion for Good is a global initiative and innovative platform that convenes brands, retailers, producers, suppliers, NGOs, innovators and funders to collectively work towards making fashion more sustainable in all aspects.