Taking place on 16-18 July at Olympia London, new responsible sourcing show, Source Fashion, will showcase the first UK presentation of a world-first breakthrough in polyester textile recycling.

In a joint venture between corporatewear specialists Project Plan B and Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL) – the trading arm of the charity – Project Re:claim sees the first commercial-scale, post-consumer polyester recycling plant launched.

Visitors to Source Fashion will be able to discover how polyester textiles have been successfully recycled back into raw material during a live seminar. The seminar on the new technology will take place on Monday 17 July at 12pm. Hosting it will be Charlene Bent, marketing manager, and also Majonne Frost, Head of Sustainability from SATCoL. The team will also be on hand at the SATCoL stand during the three-day show to talk to visitors.

Project Plan B developed the exclusive polyester recycling system, which is based on plastic bottle recycling. In September, SATCoL will install the machine at its Processing Centre in Kettering, which already sorts and processes around 65,000 tonnes of donated textiles every year.

Commenting is Suzanne Ellingham, Director of Sourcing at Source Fashion.

“The fashion industry is increasingly embracing second life, reuse, recycling and circular economy practices, but polyester recycling has remained one of the biggest challenges in recycling post-consumer clothing. We are very excited to offer SATCoL a global platform at Source Fashion to launch Project Re:claim’s groundbreaking technology.”

 

 

The new plant will recycle around 2,500 tonnes in its first year, rising to 5,000 tonnes in year two, and aims to recycle polyester that has come to the end of its useful life. The technology creates polyester pellets and has successfully produced the first yarn from these.

Majonne Frost, Head of Environment & Sustainability at SATCoL, says; “Last year, SATCoL enabled reuse and recycling of over 250 million products, but there are always items which are too damaged and we cannot resell and they are often garments made from polyester.

“With this new technology, we can give these clothes a new lease of life. So, when your favourite jumper is worn-out, we will take it and turn it into polyester pellets, ready to be turned back into a new jumper. This is the future of fashion.”

SATCoL already has the UK’s only automated textile sorting facility, Fibersort.

From the charity’s purpose-built Processing Centre in Kettering, Fibersort automatically identifies and sorts second-hand textiles by fibre type; the first step in textile-to-textile recycling. This additional new technology is the next step towards SATCoL’s ambition to create the UK’s first fibre farm to massively scale up textile-to-textile recycling of all types of materials.

Source Fashion takes place on 16-18 July 2023. For further information, please click here.