The UK based company Worn Again Technologies announced that it has hits £5 million investment target to accelerate its trail-blazing polymer recycling technology, cracking the code on the circularity of raw materials for the global textiles and apparel industry.
After more than six years of intensive R&D, Worn Again Technologies is bringing its patented technology to market. The process can separate, decontaminate and extract polyester polymers and cellulose (from cotton) from non-reusable textiles, as well as plastic bottles and packaging, to go back into new products as part of a repeatable process. The innovation is able not only to separate both polyester and cotton, but also to produce two end products that are both comparable in quality and have the aim of being competitive in price to virgin resources. The process saves energy and will accelerate us towards a waste-free, circular resource world.
Currently, less than 1% of non-wearable textiles are turned back into new textiles due to technical and economic limitations of recycling methods. Worn Again Technologies can reprocess pure and blended cotton and polyester textiles (together representing 80% of all clothing and textiles), meaning its solution offers the potential to increase the recycling of raw materials in textiles exponentially, with no price premium to manufacturers, brands or the consumer.
The catalyst for the investment was fashion retailer H&M, now joined by new partners including Sulzer Chemtech, one of the world’s largest chemical engineering companies; Mexico based Himes Corporation, a garment manufacturer; Directex, a textiles producer and Miroslava Duma’s Future Tech Lab. Worn Again Technologies is currently enlisting local, national and global investors and strategic partners who want to be part of the rapid expansion plan, as it prepares for the first industrial demonstration plant to be launched in 2021.
