5 days ago
Accelerating Circularity Tracks Commercially Available Circular Materials
Accelerating Circularity has dropped its inaugural textile-to-textile Lookbook: a curated, 62-page showcase of tangible, commercially available circular materials.
Informed by the circular supply chain nonprofit's completed trials in the United States and European Union, the lookbook confirms that the concept of circularity has a tangible, commercially-viable reality.
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'This 'lookbook' is a visual testament to what's now possible,' Karla Magruder, founder and president of Accelerating Circularity, said. 'These fabrics represent years of collaboration, data and dedication—and we're just getting started.'
For context, Accelerating Circularity launched two series of systems trials in 2021, with one in the United States and the other in Europe. Those trials brought together 74 participants across the value chain to address the gaps in circular textiles and to develop supply chains for cotton and polyester textile waste at a commercial scale. Some 72 metric tons of post-industrial and post-consumer feedstock produced later—plus a Target collaboration—the physical results of the trial are detailed within the lookbook.
Focused on building textile-to-textile recycling systems at a commercial scale, Accelerating Circularity's lookbook features textiles made with around 40 percent recycled fibers—an even split of post-consumer and post-industrial—sourced from the likes of mechanical recycler Giotex, sorter Bank & Vogue, and UK-based regulatory body Recyclatex, among others. The remaining 60 percent are first-generation (aka virgin) materials.
All of the materials meet 'critical industry performance benchmarks,' the action-oriented nonprofit said. Those benchmarks include various European Standards (EN) developed by the Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN), efforts out of ASTM International, the developer of international voluntary consensus standards, and several of the International Organization for Standardization's ISO series, among others.
Considering these formerly futuristic innovations are now real, ready-to-integrate materials for today's product pipelines, Accelerating Circularity is calling on sourcing directors and sustainability executives alike to collaborate 'where the next chapter in circular systems begins.'
That includes exploring the circular materials ready for commercial adoption—such as offerings from Portuguese mills RDD Textiles and A. Sampaio & Filhos or Mexico-based spinners like Parkdale and Giotex—as well as joining collaborative trials to develop the next round of scalable, next-gen solutions.
Accelerating Circularity's lookbook comprised fabrics from spinners and mills such as South Carolina's Clover Knits, Mexico's Cone Denim and Portugal's Polopique. German-headquartered testing center Bureau Veritas, for example, explored 11 different methods on one knit jersey fabric from Clover, testing for metrics like against fiber analysis and fabric weight as well as piling resistance and bursting strength, among others.
Italy's MagnoLab sweatshirt-quality fabric, meanwhile, was sorted by Bulgaria's Texcycle and recycled by Finland's Pure Waste. Bureau Veritas applied nine methods to test for color fastness and dimension stability to laundering as well as twisting and spirality after laundering.
True to its collaborative, stakeholder-led approach, Accelerating Circularity is also asking for industry support through contributions to its Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to divert 325 tons of textile waste from landfill and incineration.
'The move to sustainable practices is the only way forward,' the lookbook said. 'The textile industry must become circular to eliminate discarded materials and reduce the need for virgin raw materials—' because textiles are too good to waste'.'
