Recycling challenges in the textile industry
Founded in 1920, Eastman is a global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of products found in items people use every day. Fibre2Fashion spoke to Susanna Koelblin, Commercialisation & Sourcing Leader of Eastman, on new challenges the textile industry faces today for recycling of garments, how brands and end-consumers can contribute to textile recycling alike, and Eastman's major circularity activities.
What are the areas which need improvement on urgent basis in the textile industry in terms of sustainability?
What is sustainability? The word itself has no concrete legal definition, like organic in the food industry. Sustainability for me is a system that is designed to exist in a balanced state. I think it's fair enough to say that no company in the fashion and textile industry meets this definition. The next step would be regeneration that stands for reciprocity that gives back more than it takes, or in other words: regeneration restores.
Many stakeholders in the fashion and textile industry try to reduce their environmental impact. But we have to be realistic, everything takes time, it also took us decades to come to the point we are now. In the end we must save water and land, we need to reduce and compensate for global greenhouse gas emissions, we have to reduce micro-plastics in ocean and soil, and we must reduce waste destined for landfill or incineration.
We should use the same resources again and again and not only virgin materials. Ultimately the industry should aim for circularity. Circular innovations that work today are mostly still at small scale. Upscaling circularity is the next big thing.
What have been the major milestones in terms of recycling and circularity achieved by Eastman?
Last year, Eastman commercialised two molecular recycling technologies that bring recycling to the next level, and most importantly at big scale. These Advanced Circular Recycling technologies are creating value from waste by breaking down waste into its molecular building blocks so it can be reused over and over again. The two main differences between these technologies are the type of feedstock, or material input used, and the outputs produced.
Carbon Renewal Technology, output is acetate - With this technology, Eastman gives a new life to mixed textiles and a broad range of mixed waste plastics, such as single-use plastics or carpets. The recycled materials, that are identical to those produced with virgin content, can be used in a wide spectrum of end markets, such as textiles. One is Naia Renew, a man-made cellulosic fibre that has a high circular content of 40 per cent, the other 60 per cent is made of renewable cellulosics.
Polyester Renewal Technology, output is polyester - This technology enables Eastman to process hard-to-recycle polyester waste, which includes materials such as soft drink bottles, carpets and dyed textiles. It unzips polyesters and converts them into its basic monomers to create new materials. The molecules produced are also indistinguishable from materials made with virgin content.
You recently announced a $250 million plastic-to-plastic recycling facility. What is the technology behind it and how much of recycling will it handle?
Eastman is currently building one of the world's largest molecular recycling facilities to expand existing output in order to extend its Polyester Renewal Technology capacity. This state-of-the-art facility will use more than 150,000 metric tonnes of waste plastic as raw material. The feedstock for the facility will be hard-to-recycle polyester waste.
As a result, the same amount of fossil feedstock will remain in the ground. It will account for up to one third reduced greenhouse gas emissions compared to processes using fossil feedstocks. Eastman is committed to recycle more than 250 million pounds of plastic waste annually by 2025 and more than 500 million pounds of plastic waste annually by 2030.
As you say, circularity is increasingly in focus. What are the possibilities of textiles recycling to tackle this challenge?
Globally we are almost throwing away the same amount of clothes that is produced annually. 100 billion garments are being made each year. The global textile fibre market is increasing to 146 million metric tonnes in 2030, from 111 million metric tonnes in 2019. The current fashion system uses high volumes of non-renewable resources, including petroleum, extracted to produce clothes that are often used only for a short period of time, after which the materials are largely lost to landfill or incineration. There are good reasons to seek alternatives to chucking clothes in the bin.
Less than 1 per cent of the material in clothing is recycled into new garments. Most garments that are recycled are down-cycled. The biggest issue holding garment-to-garment recycling back is fibre quality, fibres are damaged during both wearing and washing. You can't take a well-used t-shirt, mechanically tear it apart and then make the fibres into a new one because they have lost so much fibre quality that the garment will not be able to fit into the market. Additionally, most of the recycling that can turn fibres back into fabric requires that the feedstock is based on mono-material. The problem is that most of the garments are made of fabric blends that make it impossible to recycle.
One option is to mix mechanically recycled fibres in with virgin fibres. Another possibility is to chemically break fibres down into their chemical building blocks and then rebuild them into new fibres with indistinguishable characteristics than virgin fibres. Only with a chemical approach we can get the raw materials back and close the loop on textile recycling on a big scale.
What is the difference between mechanical and chemical recycling?
The major difference between mechanical and chemical recycling is that the quality of mechanical recycled materials are decreasing or are downcycled, you cannot produce the same product in the same quality again in order to create a truly circular economy. In chemical recycling the quality remains on the level of virgin quality and you can recycle it an infinite number of times.
Mechanical Recycling - In the 80s recycling was invented because the world was about to run out of space in landfill. Historically, "made with recycled content", refers to materials and products made from mechanical recycling. It essentially cleans, chops and sometimes melts fibres into reusable fibres again. The most common example in this regard is recycled polyester that is not circular in a proper sense because the recycled polyester garments were not a garment before, they were made of PET bottles. Only the clear bottles are shredded, liquified and polyester yarn is spun out of them. When a recycled polyester garment is made out of PET bottles, the circular loop of the bottles is broken. Polyester garments are not mechanically recyclable anymore, because of inclusions like dyestuffs. Other mechanical recycling examples are cotton and wool recycling. Materials can only be mechanically recycled a finite number of times due to degradation, often resulting in reduced performance in key properties. Mechanical recycling requires a specific material that is clean; no mixed textiles can be recycled. Mechanical recycling is designed to delay material from going to landfill due to downcycling. This is where Chemical Recycling comes in.
Chemical Recycling - Chemical recycling can handle mixed textiles, even mixes with spandex. Many fabrics on the market that feel like cotton are blends of two or more different fibre types. Polycotton, for example, combines the soft, breathable characteristics of cotton with the durability and easy care of polyester. To recycle both the polyester and the cotton components of this blend - the recycling process must first separate them. This is impossible mechanically, but can be achieved chemically by playing on the different physical properties of the two fibres. In chemical recycling the material is broken down to basic building blocks to create new materials that are indistinguishable from virgin materials. It doesn't matter which kind of chemicals or dyes have been used and are still sticking in the garments.
According to you, how is the textile recycling industry going to evolve in terms of mindset?
Over $500 billion worth of clothes could be earned annually if the industry would shift to a circular economy. Today fashion brands envision mainly a closed loop in circularity for their own brands. They aim that the molecules of their specific brand's product will be recycled in new styles exclusively for their own collections again and again, in an infinite circle according to the premise: my product will become my product again - no other recycled molecules shall be in my product. To become truly circular this thinking limits the impact for the planet and makes the logistic very complicated, ineffective and costly. We have to think bigger in order to move from an exclusive loop to an inclusive loop.
Exclusive loop - This means one brand is using only its own waste as feedstock and this is creating many of such smaller exclusive loops for each brand. Often duplicated infrastructure is required and it is cost prohibitive to get to large scale.
Inclusive loop - This means brands are using any brands products as feedstock; it is creating one big inclusive loop. If required you even measure and trace how many tonnes of old garments a brand contributed. Mass balancing accounting is used, which is new to chemical recycling, but not new to the world. For instance, mass balance is used when you chose to buy renewable energy from wind and solar for your home. But as a matter of fact, an energy mix is coming out of your plug in your apartment, there is solar energy as well as coal energy in it and not only renewable energy from solar or wind. The amount of renewable energy, that you bought, is produced and included in the power grid and tracked by mass balance accounting. Applied to textile recycling, mass balance guarantees the quantity of the feedstock of each brand by a credible certification body (ISCC Plus is the leader).
Do I as a consumer have also options to actively contribute to circularity?
From a consumer perspective there are few possibilities.
Micro loop - Every day we make choices in our lives that effect the environment, the climate or other species. You have the choice to reuse, return and recycle. This may feel retro, but it's just as important today as when the phrase was first coined.
No loop at all - Think twice before shopping: Do I really need that product? At the end we have to change consumption, de-growth is probably the right term, we have to consider. Repairing and reselling, sure, but why are so few talking about durability in fashion? The average number of times a piece of clothing is worn decreased by one third, while clothing production doubled. These gains came at the expense of the quality and longevity of the garments. Continuing to actively wear a garment for just nine months longer could diminish its environmental impacts by one third. Product longevity beats many other sustainability efforts in orders of magnitude. A doubled lifetime of garments would mean that only half the number of garments would need to be produced.
Is there innovation going on in chemical recycling?
Today a broad range of chemical recycling technologies exist, many developed by startups, but most of them are still in small or laboratory scale or are currently in the process to be scaled up. Each technology uses different inputs such as cotton, any other cellulose based materials or polyester and mixes, and the output is broad, from man-made cellulosic to polyester. We need many innovative technologies. Since the magnitude of the global textile waste issue is so large that no one company or single technology can solve it alone. To do so many startups have entered cooperation with big fibre or fashion companies.
Scaling recycling technologies is necessary in multiple global regions. China for instance is currently producing more than 20 million tonnes of fashion-related waste products each year, representing a combination of production of waste and old clothes.
How can we make recycling easy for the consumer?
In Europe the set-up for recycling garments is well established. We have public donation boxes from different NGO's; additionally big fashion companies are offering boxes in their stores to return old clothes from any brand. The garments are then sorted from specialist companies like Texaid or I:CO to sell the garments second hand, or donate them for free or the garments are chopped up for upholster car seats. I:CO for instance processes in Germany every single day 60 tonnes of old garments in one of Europe's biggest sorting and processing facilities.
The infrastructure, where the consumer has convenient access to the recycling bin, is crucial in recycling. If a consumer does not find the entrance point to feed garments into the recycling stream, it does not work. With this set-up you make recycling easy for consumers. The supply chain between the waste management, the clothing donations, the bins in the stores and the recycling industry has to be established because many brands are waiting for more recycled materials for their collections.
How can governments facilitate recycling?
Technologies alone aren't enough. Globally, we need a reimagined recycling infrastructure that collects and delivers textiles to a better end than landfill or incineration. We need smart policies from governments that will drive investment in economical, efficient infrastructure that gets more discarded textiles into recycling facilities and then back into new, high-quality products.
For instance, in many countries you have to pay a pre-paid disposal fee for certain products. An extended producer responsibility could be applied in the fashion industry as well, which could mean that brands are responsible for their products even after ownership of the product has been transferred to the consumer. (PC)
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