Recycling meets reality at Kingpins
21/10/2021
Present on the panel were head of research and development at Pakistan’s Denim Clothing Company, Elisabete Oliveira, director of North American marketing for China’s Advance Denim, Mark Ix, plus vice president of strategy at Pakistani mill Crescent Bahuman, Zaki Saleemi.
Ms Oliveira told Ms Bramel that her company has its own unit dedicated to recycling post-industrial waste from the cutting and spinning processes. Regarding post-consumer waste, she said that Denim Clothing Company currently buys recycled post-consumer fibres directly from suppliers.
Meanwhile, Advance Denim partners with its yarn spinners to bring in mechanically recycled post-consumer and post-industrial waste, Mr Ix stated. They also purchase already recycled fibres such as Lenzing’s Refibra. (Refibra is created by upcycling cotton scraps from garment production and transforming them into cotton pulp, which is then combined with sustainably sourced wood pulp to produce Tencel lyocell fibres.)
Mr Saleemi said that Crescent Bahuman’s recycling strategy is currently divided into three streams: reused spinning waste, recycled cutting waste and post-consumer waste procured from nominated Pakistani suppliers, whether in panel or fibre format. He told Ms Bramel that the business had been recycling its spinning waste for around nine years.
Industry-wide, Mr Saleemi continued, mechanical recycling of non-synthetic blends is, in the main, the standard, as it is difficult to obtain enough chemically recycled fibre. This is because the chemical recycling industry is still at an early stage in its development, he said, adding that his firm had “reached out” to several, but their pilot stocks were already sold out.
Mr Ix added that Advance has contacted “some” Scandinavian and Spanish chemical recycling companies, but he was left “not sure what the process is”. He also raised the question of whether “other issues” might be triggered by adding more chemicals to the mix, in terms of operating “sustainably”.
A longer version of the discussion, which continued beyond the livestream, will be accessible via Kingpins’ on-demand section following the conclusion of the three-day event, which runs from October 19 through 21.
Mechanical recycling. Image credit: Mud Jeans/Recover.
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