First Cycora™ Shirt Shows the Potential of Emerging Chemical Recycling Technologies
03 February 2022: EigenDraads was established to create awareness amongst local governments, often responsible for waste management, on the recycling solutions for textiles that are emerging. Ambercycle is one of the front-running initiatives developing a solution to the textile waste problem. In 2019, Ambercycle and EigenDraads partnered to show the potential for chemical recycling to tackle the growing mountain of textile waste cities are facing across the globe. To do so, a garment was created from textile waste collected during the marathon of Rotterdam supplemented with other discarded textiles from Rotterdam citizens.
The pilot sports jersey consists of 10% of ambercycle’s cycora™ material – a polyester alternative, regenerated from landfill-destined textile ‘waste’. In 2020, the EigenDraads team was able to show the city’s councilor that Rotterdam can play an active role in creating a recycling hub to solve the waste problem using technologies like Ambercycle’s. Whilst the city did not have ambitions on textiles in the past, she now intends to publish its own vision on circular textiles.
The pilot illustrated that there is still a huge gap between the fashion industry’s focus on and investment in recycling solutions, and the acute textile waste problems governments are facing. Recycling technologies like Ambercycle’s will not scale without demand for recycled content from the fashion industry.
However, the immediate need for such technologies will never be known if governments do not start to investigate their use to reduce the growing mountain of valueless textile waste they are facing. This pilot should be the start of a new, public-private approach to close the loop on textiles and spin it around. Textile recycling is not a nice-to-have to realize circularity ambitions, but a need-to-have to tackle the growing mountain of valueless textiles we are facing.
www.cycora.com/first-cycora-shirt-ambercycle-x-eigendraads/
