CJ Clouse of GreenBiz writes on Carbios, a startup that is making fashion more eco-friendly.
- In the United States alone more than 34 billion pounds of clothing waste is produced every year, a majority of which ends up in landfills.
- French-based Carbios is looking to reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact with an enzymic process that breaks down plastic-based polyester clothing.
- After the enzymes break down the pollyester the plastics that remain can be repurposed and made into new products.
- Carbios has partnered with brands Patagonia, Puma, On, and Salomon.
“Carbios says its enzyme is also capable of selectively decomposing the polyester material, which makes it possible to recover basically all the polyester found in textile waste, even blended fabrics. And unlike conventional recycling, which degrades the quality of PET, limiting the number of times it can be recycled, as well as the amount that be used in any given product, enzymatic recycling breaks PET down at the molecular level, so it is possible to recreate a virgin quality material that can be recycled over and over again, making the process, in theory anyway, truly circular.”
Read the full article here.
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