Eco wool made from recycled plastic bottles

A Danish textile company has created a range of design fabrics using recycled polyester yarn, sourced from single-use plastic bottles

Spotted: Danish textile company, TEXSTYLE, transforms recycled plastic into a variety of design fabrics, including velvet and wool. With the latest addition of the Dolly Recycled line, which looks and feels like wool, the company now offers 15 different materials in its TEXTYLE Recycle collection, which can all be ordered in a range of colours.  

The Dolly Recycled line offers the same appearance and softness as conventional wool, while being composed of 100% recycled polyester. For every 100 meters of Dolly fabric produced, 3000 large PET bottles (approximately 1.5 litres each) are removed from the local waste stream, which equates to 69 kilograms of upcycled plastic waste. TEXSTYLE estimates that one upholstered chair using Dolly fabric represents 75 bottles of waste plastic.  

Fabrics in the TEXTYLE Recycle collection are initially sourced from plastic waste collected in mainland China. This plastic waste is then cleaned and resized into tiny PET particles, before being taken to a yarn mill and compounded into plastic pellets to create the basic yarn used to produce the entire collection.  

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the most common forms of plastic in use today. Plastic represents one of the world’s most persistent pollutants but despite growing awareness of its negative implications for people and the planet, global production of plastic continues to grow, with around 100 million tonnes produced annually. As a key driver of plastic pollution, the textiles industry, which accounts for ten per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions annually, has a huge role to play in stimulating innovation and boosting reuse to cut emissions, pollution and landfill.  

TEXTSTYLE’s Recycle collection represents a shift towards circular material and production processes within the sector. With showrooms in China, Vietnam and Denmark, TEXSTYLE’s Recycled collection provides insight into a range of opportunities for expanding its upcycling processes.  

Springwise continues to spot innovations in reusing waste, with recent highlights including recycled steel razor blades and a zero-waste design studio that turns paper into long-lasting jewellery. 

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