Textile Waste Crisis: A significant portion of textile waste is incinerated or sent to landfill due to the lack of scalable recycling solutions.

Mechanical vs. Chemical Recycling:

• Mechanical Recycling involves physical processes such as shredding, producing lower-quality fibres with limited recyclability.
• Chemical Recycling breaks down materials into monomers or polymers, maintaining fibre quality and enabling greater circularity.

Cellulosic Fibre Recycling:

• Cotton, linen, hemp, and bamboo are converted into Man-Made Cellulosic Fibres (MMCFs) through chemical processes.
• Recycling degrades cellulose over time, meaning MMCFs cannot be recycled indefinitely.
• Most innovators focus on pre-consumer waste, as post-consumer feedstock often contains contaminants that complicate processing.

Innovation Opportunities:

• Improved sorting and pre-processing to handle blended and coloured textiles.
• Development of energy-efficient and less chemically intensive recycling processes.
• Expansion of infrastructure to process post-consumer waste at scale