Green biotech company Carbios inaugurated its new textile preparation plant, a major innovation in polyester recycling, at the company’s demonstration facility in Clermont-Ferrand, France, on Oct. 2, 2023, in the presence of French Industry Minister Roland Lescure. To optimize the preparation of textiles for recycling, Carbios has developed a fully integrated and automated plant that converts textile waste from old garments or cutting scraps into raw material suitable for depolymerization using an enzymatic biorecycling process.
”In Europe, each person generates over 15 kilograms of textiles every year, mainly from discarded clothing and home textiles,” explains Emmanuel Ladent, Chief Executive Officer of Carbios. “This waste is primarily sent to incineration or landfills, both in and outside Europe, with serious consequences for people and the planet. To tackle this issue, strategies like reducing overproduction and overconsumption, extending product lifespans, and promoting circular design are crucial. Among these, fiber-to-fiber recycling, which converts textile waste into new fibers for clothing and textiles, is promising but faces some scaling challenges.”
Less than 1 percent of textile waste is currently recycled this way due to barriers like inefficient collection and sorting, fiber purity requirements and the need for advanced automated sorting and preparation. To truly embrace a circular textile economy, Carbios has developed an automated textile preparation line designed to convert used garments and cutting scraps into textile waste ready for depolymerization in its biorecycling process. “Our cutting-edge, patented system streamlines all preparation phases and serves as a powerful, scalable development tool. Today’s inauguration marks a major step toward accelerating fiber-to-fiber recycling,” Ladent added.
The patented facility streamlines all preparation phases (shredding and extraction of hard components, such as buttons or closures) and serves as a powerful, scalable development tool for Carbios. The platform will help validate the biorecycling technology for textiles in the demonstration plant. With this expertise, Carbios works closely with collection and sorting companies to define the quality of textiles and the necessary processing steps required to prepare them for enzymatic recycling. The expertise gained through this collaboration is also of great value for the sustainable design of products for brand manufacturers, such as the partners of the “Fiber-to-Fiber” textile consortium, including On, Puma and Salomon, who were present at the inauguration event in France.
Biorecycling solution for plastic and textiles
Currently, textiles are mainly sorted and prepared by hand, leaving little usable material, especially in the case of disruptive factors in the recycling process, such as “hard components,“ like zippers, buttons, etc. It is precisely this crucial preparation that Carbios is optimizing.
Carbios has developed an enzymatic recycling process that uses an enzyme capable of specifically depolymerizing PET (polyethylene terephthalate) found in various plastic and textiles. Unlike traditional thermomechanical recycling methods, which have limitations and result in quality loss with each cycle, Carbios’ innovation enables the recycling of all types of PET waste, including complex and soiled plastic, while producing recycled and recyclable PET products without compromising quality. Plastic and textile waste is now a precious raw material enabling the circular economy to become an industrial reality.
The method supports the creation of a textile recycling chain and drives the process towards a circular economy. This allows brand manufacturers in the textile industry to do without used bottles in production.
