Only around 1% of old clothing is recycled—most old t-shirts and jeans eventually end up in landfills. But early next year, some new clothes made from old apparel will start to be sold at major retailers.
Renewcell is a Sweden-based company that uses discarded cotton clothing—anything that’s too worn to be resold in the secondhand market—to make a new textile called Circulose that looks and feels indistinguishable from other brand-new fabric. The startup now runs a commercial-scale chemical recycling plant that is beginning to sell its product into the textile supply chain. It hasn’t announced which brands will be the first to sell apparel made from the material next spring, but H&M took a minority stake in the company in 2017.
Image: Photo: courtesy Renewcell
