What is fiber-to-fiber recycling?
Fiber-to-fiber recycling, whether mechanical or chemical, refers to processes that break down post-consumer textiles into raw fibers, which after multiple processes, are spun back into new yarn.
In theory, it closes the loop: old garments become new material that can be used again in production without relying to much on virgin materials.
Systemic Challenges Beneath the Surface
Over 60 percent of modern garments blend cotton, polyester, nylon, or elastane. Separating these blends for pure fiber-to-fiber processing remains a technological challenge, and often economically unviable.
As a result downcycling becomes inevitable. Mixed-blend garments often end up as insulation, fill, or wiping cloths rather than new apparel. Residual waste persists, even high-tech sortation can’t capture every fiber.
Infrastructure gaps
- Few nations have scaled fiber-to-fiber plants, meaning many collected textiles must travel long distances, compounding environmental costs.
- Local regulations and inconsistent EPR schemes lead to fragmented materials streams, undermining steady feedstock supply.
- High capital expenditure:Building a chemical recycling plant can cost tens of millions of euros. The machines must handle corrosive solvents, precise temperature controls, and strict safety standards.
Industries message vs reality
- Marketing overstatement: Brands and recyclers tend to advertise fiber-to-fiber as a circular solution, suggesting every clothing item can have endless lives.
- Degraded quality: Mechanical recycling shreds the materials, producing shorter, weaker fibers that can only be blended with virgin inputs for acceptable strength. So the original fibers are first downgraded into a lesser state and needs to be mended, inorder to achieve a quality that is accepted, but still a lower quality than originally. Chemical recycling can restore the fibers length but often demanding processes needing high temperatures, solvents, and extensive purification.
- Energy-intensive processes: Both mechanical and chemical methods consume energy by steps like shredding, washing,solvent recovery and more.
-
A Call for Honest Innovation
Fiber-to-fiber recycling has a role to play, but alone it is not the solution, not in its current ways. By focusing solely on closing the loop at the end of life, we ignore where the problems come from.
Instead, we must focus on:
- Shift design mindsets toward design that is made to be longer lasting, better and more conscious of material decisions, design in a way that enables mending services, tat modularity and timelessness.
- Build recycling infrastructure that can correctly handle the textile fractions and keep them in the loop as long as possible without downcycling them. This can include to empower repair, reuse, and resale networks at a local levels and much more.
- Embrace policy and EPR schemes that incentivize all circular stages - especially durable design and reuse of the collected textiles that can be used as raw material - rather than only recycling fees. *
- Change in structure: We need a shift from our current ways of contributing to the fast fashion trends that drives overproduction and lower quality on a spiral down and start to develop and produce products that are made to last, with a purpose from an already existing material source.
Ultimately, a more genuine and circular textile economy must emerge from aligned actions: producers and brands committing to long-lasting products, consumers choosing quality over quantity, and innovators investing in solutions that respect materials, from creation to final retirement.
Interested in learning or developing better textile solutions? We are always eager for the next challenge, project or partner.
Contact us for strategic consulting, workshops, collaborative projects or if you have any questions.
