Chemists are hacking fashion to save the planet | Just Might Work by Freethink

Fast fashion is endangering the planet. These chemists are fighting back | Shay Sethi, CEO of Ambercycle
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Our clothes don’t die — or, at least the non-biodegradable textiles that they’re made of don’t usually get a second life.

In 2018 alone, 11.3 million tons of those textile mixtures waste ended up in landfills, the EPA says. And the lion’s share of that waste comes from clothing — over a billion garments worth.

Fast fashion — a term used to describe an industry that relies on fast manufacturing and styles that quickly go out of vogue — is reliant on these textiles. A June 2021 report by London’s Royal Society for Arts (RSA) found that more than 80% of some offerings on websites contained new plastic in them, and despite recent media attention, clothing companies are still slow to adopt truly recycled garments into their product lines.

While there are clothes made from recycled polyester, calling them “recycled” is a bit disingenuous — in fashion, most polyester recycling pulls the plastic from water bottles, not clothing

Ambercycle CEO Shay Sethi is deploying a different, proprietary form of recycling, one that separates materials at the molecular level. It’s called chemical recycling, and the technique allows Ambercycle to pull plastic fibers from textiles, leaving the fibers unharmed and ready to be used in new clothes.


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Read more of our stories on recycling:
Recycling robot keeps waste out of landfills
►► https://www.freethink.com/environment...
Can tech rentals solve the problem of electronic waste?
►► https://www.freethink.com/technology/...
A sweet way to recycle cotton — turn it into sugar
►► https://www.freethink.com/environment...

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No politics, no gossip, no cynics. At Freethink, we believe the daily news should inspire people to build a better world. While most media is fueled by toxic politics and negativity, we focus on solutions: the smartest people, the biggest ideas, and the most ground breaking technology shaping our future.
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