French firm makes first ‘fibre-to-fibre’ recycled polyester T-shirt

A French company has shown off the first plain white T-shirt entirely made out of recycled polyester fabric recycled from offcuts.

This ‘fibre-to-fibre’ system uses enzymes to produce fibres of the same quality as new polyester from oil.

Its development could mean that the masses of polyester clothes, which are now nearly all incinerated after being thrown away, could be recycled.

“A garment made from 100% textile waste is a world first,” Emmanuel Ladent, founder and CEO of Carbios, told The Connexion.

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Transforming the textile industry

“It serves to demonstrate the potential for transforming the textile industry where only 1% of recycled fibres presently come from textiles.”

The fibres for the T-shirt were obtained from factory offcuts and other waste products from Carbios’s partners in the project, which include US-based clothing company Patagonia, the German sports goods company Puma and French ski-maker Salomon.

The offcuts included polyester fabric which had been coloured and subject to various treatments, including waterproofing, and which also contained other fibres such as cotton and elastane.

Until now, the best known recycled plastic material was ‘fleece’, made mainly out of recycled plastic bottles of the PET type, used for bottled water.

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Recycled bottles made into ‘fleece’

Only around a third of the bottles are recycled, and the ‘fleece’ has to be mixed with some new oil-based plastic material as part of the manufacturing process.

The process developed by Carbios uses enzymes to break down polyester cloth into fibres, which can then be spun and woven into material suitable for a T-shirt.

Carbios built a research unit near Clermont-Ferrand to perfect its techniques. It is now building a larger factory in Longlaville (Moselle).

Contracts to recycle PET trays and water bottles have already been signed, with full-scale production due to start in 2026.

It is hoped the success of the fibre-to-fibre T-shirt will mean the factory can put in lines to recycle polyester fabrics quickly, not least because this should be cheaper to source than water bottles or plastic containers, which have to go through an elaborate sorting process.

Garments must have buttons and zips removed first.

Mr Ladent added that the company is exploring further uses for its technology, including a way to recycle glass fibre boats and aircraft. In spite of years of effort, no way has yet been found to recycle fibre glass and most is currently chopped up and buried.