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Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.

The Hunt for an Easy Way to Recycle Old Clothes

Technologies that can recycle old clothes back into new ones have been touted as a holy-grail sustainability solution. As they begin to scale, the industry is facing a tricky new logistics challenge.
Industrial baskets are lined up in a warehouse. A white one is filled with packages of clothes made from cotton, a red one contains wool and two yellow ones polyester and nylon.
Startup SuperCircle is aiming to build a tech and logistics platform that connects old clothes to recyclers. (SuperCircle)

When Chloe Songer and Stuart Ahlum launched the footwear brand Thousand Fell

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Further Reading

The Year Ahead: Paving the Way for Closed-Loop Recycling

The scaling of closed-loop recycling could help reduce fashion’s environmental impact at the materials level. The technologies to make this happen are maturing, creating an opportunity for companies to embed them in a product’s design phase while adopting processes to enable scaling.

Chasing The Holy Grail of Circular Fashion

Scaling technology that can recycle old clothes back into new ones has eluded the industry for a decade. A series of new projects this year suggest fashion may be nearing a tipping point.

Case Study | Fashion’s Race for New Materials

Brands are pursuing a raft of initiatives to adopt recycled textiles, regeneratively farmed cotton and mushroom-based leather, but giving fashion’s major materials a sustainability makeover still requires billions of dollars worth of investments and deeper, longer-term commitments to scale. BoF breaks down some of the key innovations, the companies leading the charge and the barriers to change.

About the author
Sarah Kent
Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent is Chief Sustainability Correspondent at The Business of Fashion. She is based in London and drives BoF's coverage of critical environmental and labour issues.

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