Source Fashion will showcase the first UK presentation of a world breakthrough in polyester textile recycling.
In a joint venture between corporate wear specialists Project Plan B and Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL), the charity's trading arm, Project Re: claim, has seen the first commercial-scale, post-consumer polyester recycling plant.
Visitors to Source Fashion will be able to discover how polyester textiles have been successfully recycled back into raw material during a live seminar on the new technology by Charlene Bent, Marketing Manager.
Majonne Frost, Head of Sustainability from SATCoL will be discussing its possibilities and game-changing impact for the fashion industry. The team will also be on hand during the three-day show on the SATCoL stand SF-G60 to talk to visitors.
The fashion industry is increasingly embracing circular economy practices, but polyester recycling has remained one of the biggest challenges in recycling post-consumer clothing.
Project Plan B developed the exclusive polyester recycling based on plastic bottle recycling, and SATCoL will install the machine at their Processing Centre in Kettering this September.
The new plant will recycle around 2,500 tonnes in its first year, rising to 5,000 tonnes in the next. It aims to recycle polyester that has come to the end of its useful life by creating polyester pellets to produce yarn successfully.
SATCoL, Kettering, already has the UK's only automated textile sorting facility, Fibersort, which automatically identifies and sorts second-hand textiles by fibre type and is the first step in textile-to-textile recycling.
This new technology, to massively scale up textile-to-textile recycling of all types of material, presents a huge opportunity for the fashion circular economy.
