On October 29, 2024, sportswear giant PUMA announced its involvement in a groundbreaking project, collaborating with a consortium of major brands to create the world’s first piece of clothing made entirely from textile waste. The plain white T-shirt, manufactured with bio recycling technology from French company CARBIOS, represents a significant advancement in a circular fashion and sustainable manufacturing.
CARBIOS’ innovative enzymatic depolymerization technology breaks down polyester in textile waste to its fundamental building blocks, producing biorecycled polyester of quality comparable to that of virgin oil-based polyester. By transforming mixed and colored textile waste into high-quality recycled fibers, this technology provides a promising alternative to traditional polyester production.
PUMA’s Chief Sourcing Officer, Anne-Laure Descours, emphasized the company’s ambition to source 100% of its polyester from textile waste, calling this project an essential milestone in moving toward a more circular fashion industry. “Today’s announcement is an important milestone towards achieving this and making our industry more circular,” she noted. “We now need to work together to make sure we can scale up this technology to make the largest possible impact.”
The consortium aims to accelerate the shift to a circular economy by refining and industrializing CARBIOS’ biorecycling technology, which would allow polyester textiles to be continuously recycled without the need for new petroleum-based materials. This biorecycling process lowers carbon emissions and reduces waste, supporting a sustainable future for the textile industry.
CARBIOS CEO Emmanuel Ladent highlighted the groundbreaking nature of this innovation, noting, “It may look like an ordinary t-shirt, but make no mistake, the technology behind it is extraordinary.” Ladent credited the collaborative effort of consortium partners in overcoming numerous technical challenges to achieve this breakthrough.
With current recycling methods limited mostly to PET bottles, the project underscores an important step toward achieving fiber-to-fiber recycling on an industrial scale, signaling a new era for sustainable textile production.
