Fashion has always been about growing more cotton, using more water, spraying more chemicals, and pumping more oil to sell more of the season’s must-haves. Bigger, faster, cheaper and more wasteful. Linear.
CIRCULOSE® makes fashion circular.
It is a Next Generation material made by recovering cellulose from worn-out clothes and production scraps. Brands choose CIRCULOSE® as it replaces the use of virgin materials such as wood pulp or cotton, is available at scale through the CIRCULOSE® Supplier Network, and helps to close the loop on textile production.
CIRCULOSE® is made from 100% recyled textiles, like that worn-out pair of jeans at the back of your closet. It is a ‘dissolving pulp’ that can be used to make viscose, lyocell, modal, acetate, and other types of regenerated fibers (also called man-made cellulosic fibers). These fibers are then spun into yarns, woven or knitted into fabrics and finally cut and sewn into new high-quality textile products.
The only difference with textiles made with CIRCULOSE® is that they are made from textile waste instead of new cotton, oil or wood.
Our recycling process works like this:
1. We take in discarded textiles like clothes that can no longer be resold or used, or production waste. We prefer cotton fabrics because they contain a lot of cellulose.
2. The clothes are shredded, de-buttoned, de-zipped, de-colored and turned into a slurry. Contaminants like polyester are taken out. What remains is cellulose – a biodegradable organic polymer that cotton, trees and most green plants on earth are made out of.
3. The slurry is dried to produce sheets of pure CIRCULOSE®. We package the sheets into bales and ship them off to be made back into virgin quality textile fibers by fiber producers.
4. Brands design and produce new clothes using fibers made from CIRCULOSE®.
5. Loop closed.
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