Recycled Cotton Fabric

The production of recycled cotton fabric involves several steps:

1. Collecting and sorting the cotton waste: The two primary sources of cotton waste are post-consumer waste, such as discarded garments and textiles, and pre-consumer waste, including manufacturing leftovers like offcuts and defective items. These raw materials are sorted by color, fabric type, and quality to ensure consistency in the final recycled cotton fabric.
2. Cleaning the cotton waste: The collected and sorted cotton is thoroughly cleaned to remove impurities, including dirt, labels, and other non-cotton materials. This step ensures that the fibers are free of contaminants and suitable for further processing.
3. Shredding and carding the fibers: The cleaned cotton is shredded into small pieces, breaking it down into individual fibers. These fibers are then carded, aligning them into a uniform fleece to prepare the material for spinning.
4. Blending and spinning the fibers into yarn: To enhance strength and durability, the recycled fibers are often blended with longer non-recycled cotton fibers. The blended fibers are then spun into yarn, forming continuous threads ready for weaving or knitting.
5. Creating and finishing the fabric: The spun yarn is woven or knitted into recycled cotton fabric using industrial looms or knitting machines. The fabric also undergoes finishing treatments, such as dyeing, washing, or softening, to improve its texture, appearance, and overall quality before being sewn into new textile products.

These are some of the advantages of recycled cotton:

1. Reduces textile waste in landfills: By repurposing cotton waste, recycled cotton helps decrease the amount of textile waste that ends up in landfills or incinerators.
2. Conserves energy and non-renewable resources: Recycled cotton reduces the need for virgin cotton farming and energy-intensive, petroleum-based agricultural products.
3. Lower water usage than conventional cotton: Cotton recycling uses less water than cultivating and processing new cotton fibers, minimizing water usage.
4. Reduces carbon emissions: Recycled cotton lowers overall carbon emissions associated with cotton fabric production by eliminating the farming and initial processing stages.
5. Minimizes chemical use: Recycled cotton reduces reliance on pesticides, fertilizers, and other agricultural chemicals used in conventional cotton farming.
6. Reduces the need for agricultural land: Recycled cotton reduces reliance on agricultural land, helping to prevent deforestation and soil degradation.
7. Extends the lifecycle of cotton fibers: Recycled cotton maximizes the utility of cotton fibers by giving them a second life, reducing the overall resource footprint per fiber.

Recycled cotton fabric retains most of the physical properties of regular cotton, such as heat resistance, breathability, and moisture-wicking. However, the shredding process shortens the fibers, making recycled cotton unsuitable for products requiring long fibers like T-shirts, underwear, or yoga wear unless blended with non-recycled cotton. Without blending, recycled cotton is best suited for denim, jackets, and home textiles, where short fibers are standard. Deadstock cotton (pictured above) is a unique type of recycled cotton where excess fabric from manufacturers is repurposed, reducing waste while preserving fiber length.

Recycled cotton certification ensures transparency and sustainability in production. The two main standards to search for are the Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) and the Global Recycled Standard (GRS).

Here’s how they compare:

• Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) focuses on verifying the recycled content in a finished recycled cotton product through chain of custody certification but does not address environmental or social impacts during production. It tracks recycled material through the supply chain but lacks requirements for waste management, chemical restrictions, or labor standards.
• Global Recycled Standard (GRS) goes beyond recycled content verification, including additional strict criteria for environmental and social responsibility. It mandates waste and chemical management, emission monitoring, and adherence to labor standards such as fair wages, safe workplaces, and prohibitions on child and forced labor. This makes GRS the more comprehensive certification for ensuring sustainable practices in recycled cotton production.

Recycled cotton and regular cotton share some similarities but differ significantly in other areas. Here's a detailed comparison across key categories:

Environmental sustainability

Recycled cotton is more environmentally sustainable than regular cotton due to its reduced resource use and minimized waste. Repurposing cotton waste avoids the need for water-intensive cotton cultivation, agricultural land use, and harmful chemical inputs. It reduces soil degradation, deforestation, and water pollution while diverting waste from landfills and incinerators, significantly lowering its overall environmental impact compared to conventional cotton. Recycled cotton’s sustainability benefits are further enhanced with GRS certification, which enforces additional environmental criteria such as proper waste and wastewater management, chemical restrictions, and compliance with broader sustainability standards.

Social sustainability

The social sustainability of recycled cotton depends on the practices of the facilities involved in its collection, sorting, and recycling. While all recycled cotton reduces reliance on labor-intensive virgin cotton production, often associated with exploitation and poor working conditions, such as child labor in Kyrgyzstan and forced labor in Xinjiang, China, it does not automatically ensure ethical labor practices in recycled cotton fabric production.

Without third-party certification like the Global Recycled Standard (GRS), there is no guarantee that recycled cotton adheres to ethical labor standards. GRS certification enhances the social sustainability of recycled cotton by requiring social criteria such as fair wages, safe workplaces, and prohibiting child and forced labor. This sets GRS-certified recycled cotton apart from uncertified recycled cotton and conventional cotton, which may lack such safeguards.

Product quality

Recycled cotton often performs worse than regular cotton in strength, softness, and durability due to the shorter fibers produced during the recycling process. Fiber length, or staple length, is a key determinant of cotton quality, influencing characteristics like uniformity, color absorption, and strength. The mechanical shredding used in recycling reduces fiber length, limiting the usability of recycled cotton fabric for high-end products usually made from long-staple or extra-long-staple cotton. To improve its performance, recycled cotton is often blended with virgin cotton or other fibers, enhancing strength, texture, and durability. It is particularly well-suited for sustainable jeans, jackets, and home textiles.

Price

Recycled cotton is significantly more expensive than conventional cotton, costing about $3.82 per pound compared to $0.76 per pound for conventional cotton. This price difference reflects the labor-intensive recycling processes, including collecting, sorting, and shredding textile waste. Conventional cotton, by contrast, benefits from low labor costs and minimal regulations in major cotton-producing countries, making it cheap to produce in comparison.