Recycled Polyester Alone Cannot Solve Fashion’s Climate and Waste Problems, New Study Finds

Recycled polyester has become one of the fashion industry’s most widely adopted strategies for reducing reliance on virgin synthetic fibres, but new research suggests that simply replacing virgin polyester with recycled material will not be enough to address the sector’s climate and waste impacts.

A life cycle assessment published by Textile Exchange in collaboration with SCS Consulting Services examines the environmental impacts of virgin polyester alongside chemical and thermomechanical recycling systems. The study provides new primary data from polyester production and recycling facilities in China, Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States.

Its findings show that the climate performance of recycled polyester is highly dependent on how and where recycling takes place. Electricity consumption is one of the largest contributors to environmental impacts across polyester production, meaning a recycling facility supplied by a carbon-intensive electricity grid can still generate substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

The report therefore challenges the idea that recycled polyester should automatically be treated as a low-carbon material.

Energy Source Can Determine Recycling Impacts

For both chemical and thermomechanical recycling, electricity and other forms of energy are significant environmental factors. Facilities operating in regions where electricity generation remains heavily dependent on coal can have considerably higher climate impacts than equivalent operations supplied by lower-carbon or renewable power.

This has practical implications for brands, manufacturers and recycling companies planning future capacity. Textile Exchange says companies developing recycling facilities should consider locations with greater availability of renewable electricity, power purchase agreements or on-site renewable generation.

Location decisions may therefore become an increasingly important part of fashion companies' Scope 3 decarbonization strategies. Recycling technology alone does not determine the emissions associated with a fibre. The energy system surrounding the recycling facility also matters.

The findings reflect a wider problem across apparel manufacturing. The Apparel Impact Institute estimated that the sector produced 944 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, an increase of 7.5% from 2022. The organization identified higher production volumes and continued dependence on fossil-based polyester among the factors contributing to the increase.

Transport Distances also Matter

The assessment identifies transportation of waste feedstock as another important variable, particularly for recycled polyester.

For thermomechanical recycling, the distance travelled by waste materials can become a significant contributor to environmental impacts. The study indicates that the distance feedstock is transported can be more important than differences in the emissions intensity of the vehicles themselves.

This finding raises questions about recycling systems that rely on moving large quantities of waste between continents.

Building recycling capacity closer to sources of textile waste or manufacturing waste could reduce transport requirements while improving access to suitable feedstocks. However, creating regional recycling networks requires investment in collection, sorting and preprocessing infrastructure, areas that remain underdeveloped in many markets.

Most Recycled Polyester Still Comes from Bottles

The bigger structural challenge concerns where recycled polyester comes from.

Around 98% of recycled polyester is currently produced from post-consumer plastic bottles rather than textile waste, according to figures cited by Textile Exchange and other industry assessments.

Bottle-derived polyester can reduce demand for virgin fossil-based polyester, but it does relatively little to address the growing volume of discarded clothing generated by the fashion industry.

It can also shift PET bottles away from established bottle-to-bottle recycling systems into textiles, where further recycling is significantly more difficult.

Thermomechanical recycling requires relatively homogeneous, high-quality material because contaminants, additives, and mixed fibres are difficult to remove during processing. Polyester also degrades through repeated mechanical recycling, limiting the number of times the material can be processed using this method.

Chemical recycling could potentially address some of these limitations. Instead of simply melting polyester, chemical processes break the polymer down into its constituent components, which can then be used to manufacture new material.

Textile Exchange's research indicates that chemical recycling can process both post-industrial and post-consumer textile waste and can remove some dyes and additives. However, sorting and cleaning post-consumer clothing remains challenging, and several chemical recycling technologies assessed in the research have not yet reached full commercial scale.

Textile-to-Textile Recycling Remains Limited

Developing textile-to-textile systems is therefore becoming a central challenge for fashion's transition towards circular material use.

The sector currently generates far more textile waste than existing recycling infrastructure can process. Textile-to-textile recycling still represents only a very small proportion of global fibre production, while collection, automated sorting and fibre-separation technologies remain barriers to large-scale deployment.

Recent investment in chemical polyester recycling demonstrates that technology is advancing, but commercial viability remains uncertain. Recycling companies must secure consistent volumes of suitable textile feedstock while competing economically with inexpensive virgin polyester produced from oil and gas.

The location of recycling infrastructure will also matter. Access to waste, renewable electricity, manufacturing supply chains and transport networks could determine whether future plants deliver meaningful environmental benefits.

Recycling Must Form Part of a Broader Strategy

The new research does not suggest that recycled polyester should be abandoned. Reducing demand for virgin fossil-based polyester remains important, particularly given polyester's dominant position within the global fibre market.

Instead, the findings indicate that sustainability strategies need to move beyond simply measuring the percentage of recycled content in clothing.

Companies may increasingly need to evaluate the origin of recycled feedstock, the electricity used during processing, transportation requirements and whether materials can remain within textile recycling systems.

Reducing production volumes, extending product lifetimes and designing clothing that can be repaired and recycled will also be necessary if the industry wants to reduce both emissions and waste.

Textile Exchange similarly argues that material decisions should be considered as part of wider production systems rather than assuming that individual fibres are automatically environmentally preferable. Its recent guidance emphasises factors including climate, nature, human impacts and production practices when assessing material sustainability.

For fashion companies, the implication is increasingly clear: recycled polyester can contribute to decarbonization and reduced fossil-resource demand, but it is not a standalone solution.

The next stage of the industry's transition will depend on developing genuinely circular textile-to-textile recycling systems, powering production with lower-carbon energy and reducing the overall volume of clothing that becomes waste.

Source:

• www.esgdive.com

• textileexchange.org