Germany’s Puma Trials Garment-to-Garment Recycling For Sustainability

Sports company, Puma, is set to pilot an innovative production process to use existing football [soccer] jerseys to produce new ones. This initiative is aimed at reducing waste and paving the way towards more circular production models in the future. The RE:JERSEY project by the German-based firm takes football kits as the ingredient to create yarn for new jerseys.

The process used in RE:JERSEY means that old garments that feature logos, embroideries and club badges, which previously hindered recycling efforts to turn old garments into new ones, can now be used. In the recycling process used for the RE:JERSEY project, the garments are chemically broken down into their main components (depolymerisation). Colours are then filtered out and the material is chemically put back together to create a yarn (repolymerisation) that has the same performance characteristics as virgin polyester, Puma said in a press release. Read more at Fibre2Fashion.