French biochemistry and enzymatic recycling company Carbios has taken another step towards deploying its PET biorecycling technology to textiles. Carbios first tested textile depolymerisation at lab scale in 2018. In 2021 it achieved the first results at pilot scale and in 2022 it launched a fibre-to-fibre consortium together with On, Patagonia, Puma, and Salomon. Now, the company has inaugurated a textile preparation line at its demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand, France.
To streamline the textile preparation phase, which is currently carried out by hand or on several lines, Carbios has developed a fully integrated and automated line that transforms textile waste from used garments or cutting scraps, into raw material suitable for depolymerisation with its enzymatic biorecycling process.
The new, patented, preparation line has a processing capacity of 300 kg of textiles per hour in a continuous process. Used clothing or cutting scraps are loaded into the line, where they are first shredded, and then have metallic and non-metallic residues such as buttons and zips removed in several steps. The platform is expected to help validate Carbios’ biorecycling technology for textiles at demonstration plant scale by 2024. It should also provide the company with expertise in working with collection and sorting operators to specify the quality of textiles and the preparation steps needed to make them suitable for enzymatic recycling.
Carbios has developed proprietary biorecycling technology for recycling the polyester (PET) fibres widely used in apparel, footwear and sportswear. PET polyester is the most important fibre for the textile industry, even more so than cotton. Polyester textiles account for two-thirds of the global PET market of around 100 million tons. However, only 13% of textile waste is currently recycled, and only 1% is recycled fibre-to-fibre. Separate collection of textile waste will be mandatory in Europe from January 1, 2025. By 2030, the European Union intends to require textiles to contain a minimum percentage of recycled fibres.
“Textile recycling is a major issue, as the need for solutions to manage the life cycle of these products is critical: worldwide, only 13% of textile waste is currently recycled, with the remaining 87% ending up in landfill or incineration,” said Roland Lescure, French Minister of Industry. “Carbios is contributing [to] the creation of a French recycling industry. Thanks to its know-how and its innovative, collaborative spirit, Carbios is providing a solution – cutting-edge and made in France – to what was until now a real obstacle to textile recycling.”
Carbios’ biorecycling process uses an enzyme capable of selectively extracting and depolymerising the polyester, recovering it to recreate a virgin fibre. The technology makes it possible to recover the PET polyester present in all textile waste, mixed and otherwise, that cannot be recycled using traditional technologies.
Following a growing number of plastics chemical recycling announcements, the textile industry has recently joined the bandwagon with the launch of the Alliance of Chemical Textile Recycling (ACTR).