Accelerating Circularity Is Ready to Mainstream Textile-to-Textile Recycling. Is the Industry?
Accelerating Circularity’s trials have shown that it’s possible to sort, pre-process, recycle and blend textile waste beyond what it describes as “proof of concept.” Now the New York-based nonprofit wants to kick things up a notch, repurposing 325 tons of post-consumer cotton, polyester and man-made cellulosic materials through the multiple supply chains that it’s already established with brand, retail and manufacturing partners across Europe and the United States.
It’s a new era in the organization’s development and one that takes a three-pronged approach to “scale the success” of its first systems trials, said Sarah Coulter, the organization’s U.S. program director. The first workstream will result in a mapping tool to “guide the flow of textiles” through channels that have the highest circular potential according to its textile-use hierarchy, which prioritizes higher-value utilization of textiles before resorting to disposal. The second involves building markets, meaning moving beyond demonstrations that circular systems can exist to mainstreaming the inclusion of textile-to-textile recycled fibers, yarns and fabrics in the marketplace. The third and last workstream will span the first two, packaging their learnings for brand, retail and corporate audiences to promote their uptake.
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While Accelerating Circularity’s goal attacks only a fraction of the 90 million tons of textiles that it estimates end up in landfills every year, it’s still a significant amount, translating to a “couple of million T-shirts, a couple of million pairs of jeans and a million hoodies,” Coulter said.
The nonprofit knows it can do this: It worked with Target, which sits on its steering committee, to develop and launch a shrunken crewneck T-shirt and cami for the big box’s Universal Thread range for Earth Day. Walmart, another early backer, currently sells Wrangler jeans that Beyond Retro and Accelerating Circularity helped create using 26 percent recycled cotton. But though it has onboarded a number of participants, including returning collaborators, over the past several months, Accelerating Circularity would like to welcome more as it enters this new phase.
“Based on successful developments from our round one trials, we feel like we’ve hit the ground running,” she said. “We know we’re going to make cotton jersey, we know we’re going to make denim, we know we’re going to make fleece and we know we’re going to make woven shirting material. So now is your chance, if you are not yet participating, to join us and capitalize on the work that’s already been done by our partners…while the getting is good.”
Coulter said that Accelerating Circularity is currently wrapping up its development phase: confirming the feedstock specifications, for instance, and “doing the hard math” on what volumes are going to be needed per project. Supply chains for mechanically recycled cotton, thermomechanically recycled polyester and chemically recycled polyester are raring to go, with those for man-made cellulosic fibers and nylon “in the works.” Beginning in 2025, Accelerating Circularity will be generating prototype materials and soliciting bulk orders from brands and retailers. Mass production is expected to take place the following year.
The problem with the fashion industry is that it tends to get stuck in splashy but short-lived capsule or pilot mode. Breaking out of that cycle, Coulter said, involves sharing the risk of developing something new. There are challenges, to be sure. Take pre-processing, which, for the most part, is still being done manually. While automated sortation and pre-processing solutions exist—Tomra, which traffics in sensor-based sorting systems, is another steering committee member—they’re not necessarily at the scale they need to be. Among the biggest stumbling blocks, however, is demand, or the potential lack thereof. It’s the uptake of those 325 tons of material that’s a bigger concern than Accelerating Circularity’s ability to recycle them.
Other issues are stickier, such as ensuring that feedstock doesn’t originate from conflict regions. Accelerating Circularity is looking at working with a DNA tracer to ensure that any cotton content doesn’t violate the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act, or UFLPA, in the United States, said Shelly Gottschamer, its vice president of global programs and stakeholder engagement. At the same time, there is a need to legislate in a way that promotes recycled materials, she said.
“For the UFLPA…I think we need some clarity around how does recycled cotton fit into this legislation?” she said. “Because if we are subject to the laws for recycled content, we will not be able to recycle, and that’s a problem. And there’s other legislation around legacy chemicals that we also need to be able to figure out to promote recycling.”
For the most part, however, the supply chain is ready, Coulter said. And if the industry is serious about cleaning up its textile waste problem, it needs to put its money where its mouth is. At present, the materials fashion makes outlast the products they were intended for. The organization’s vision is a world where textiles are no longer wasted.
“Brands and retailers have pretty ambitious GHG goals,” she said, using an acronym for greenhouse gases. “Many have recycled content goals, and we really believe that participating in collaborative projects like this is a critical way to begin to be able to meet those in a meaningful way.”
Economic benefits abound, too, according to innovation platform Fashion for Good, which estimates that textile-to-textile recycling could unlock a $1.5 billion opportunity in the United States alone. Right now, collectors and recyclers in Europe are sounding the alarm that the economics of the current setup aren’t working and that their sector could be headed for collapse.
“For this unlock to happen, we need circular systems, and we need these systems to scale in parallel,” Coulter said. “Figuring out the business model is critical in order for any of this to work.”
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