Post by matterr

PET bottles were not designed for textile recycling - yet they have become the main source of recycled polyester. Today, almost all recycled polyester comes from mechanically recycled PET bottles - not from discarded clothing, pre-consumer textile waste, or ocean plastics. According to Textile Exchange, around 98% of all recycled polyester fibre produced, came from plastic bottles in 2024. The reason is simple: the PET bottle recycling infrastructure is well established and PET bottles have a high purity, making it easier to produce high-quality recycled material.  But this reliance of the textile industry onto bottle-based source-material comes with a trade-off. It creates competition with the bottle industries, putting pressure on their own circularity targets, while textile waste remains largely untapped.  Fibre-to-fibre recycling, whether mechanical or thermo-mechanical, requires high-quality and homogeneous inputs. However, in reality textile waste is very complex, containing:    - diverse fibre materials and blends,  - dyes, prints and finishes,   - contaminants.   As a result, the majority of textile waste is downcycled into lower-value products, or lost from the system entirely.  At matterr, we are working on the recycling of complex polyester waste. Our chemical recycling technology breaks down polyester into its monomers, removing unwanted constituents, yielding purified building blocks for polyester fibre.