In July 2022, On, Patagonia, Puma, Salomon, and LVHM announced that they had joined forces with French biochemical company Carbios to use its biorecycling technology for synthetic fiber recycling, improving their products’ recyclability and ongoing reusability.
Through their collaboration, Carbios developed the first garment manufactured from 100 percent textile waste in a biological recycling process—a white T-shirt created from colored and mixed textile waste.
Using Carbios’ biorecycling technology, the polyester was broken down using enzymes into its fundamental building blocks to produce biorecycled polyester. The quality of the recycled textiles is on par with oil-based virgin polyester.
“Puma’s wish is to have 100 percent of our polyester coming from textile waste. Today’s announcement is an important milestone towards achieving this and making our industry more circular,” said Anne-Laure Descours, chief sourcing officer at Puma. “We now need to work together to make sure we can scale up this technology to make the largest possible impact. We’re excited to be part of this breakthrough and setting new standards for fibre-to-fibre recycling.”
In a media release, Puma said, “The consortium aims to “collectively advance the textile industry’s shift towards a circular economy by developing and industrializing Carbios’ enzymatic depolymerization technology to achieve 100 percent “fibre-to-fibre” recycling. By doing so, petroleum can be replaced by textile waste as a raw material to produce polyester textiles. These textiles can once again become raw materials, thus fueling a circular economy with the added benefit of a lower carbon footprint and avoiding waste that ends up in landfills or incinerators.”
“It may look like an ordinary t-shirt, but make no mistake, the technology behind it is extraordinary,” said Carbios CEO Emmanuel Ladent. “To achieve “fibre-to-fibre” recycling is a technological feat. Carbios couldn’t have done it alone, so thanks to the collaboration with our consortium partners, we have overcome many technical hurdles together to produce the world’s first enzymatically recycled t-shirt made entirely from biorecycled fibres.”
The consortium reported, “The majority of recycled polyester in the industry is made from PET bottles, and only 1 percent of fibers are recycled into new fibers. The collective achievement marks an important milestone for the consortium’s ultimate aim of demonstrating a closed fiber-to-fiber loop using Carbios’ biorecycling process at an industrial scale.
Image courtesy Carbios
