This process is unbelievably cool...
A key area the world is waking up to change is through sending less waste to landfill. Regenerated or recycled cotton is a clever way of helping the environment through taking waste and making it into useful material again.
When the factories are producing cotton fabric yarn there is a lot of waste, which ends up going to landfill. Regenerated cotton collects the waste yarn, sorts and separates it into similar colours and re-processes it to create new cotton yarn.
The colour separation is a key point here, because in doing this it means that the yarn doesn’t have to be re-dyed, which saves all the water, chemicals and energy used in the dying process again. To ensure the quality of the fabric it is often blended with recycled polyester to make it more durable. However 100% recycled cotton is a truly circular product.
It takes around 2000-3000 liters of water to produce virgin cotton crop for 1 t-shirt. Using recycled cotton, saves a huge amount of water that can be saved and used for other purposes.
Growing new cotton crop uses energy through machinery and fertilisers and pesticides. Reusing and not growing more crops reduces environmental impact of these chemicals impacting the quality of soil and finding its way into the water system.
Reduces waste going to landfill. Cotton is known to be one of the greatest contributors to environmental issues, so being able to reuse and recycle clothing makes a significant impact on global waste.
Because of the process collecting similar colours to make the yarn, it avoids the dyeing process which uses large amounts of energy, water and chemicals which can again pollute the water system.
