I’m in one Overnight flights from New York to Frankfurt, Germany and the equipment I gave me in Business Class had a sustainable sheen. Both the polyester blankets and the polyester flight kits proudly claim that they are made of fabric and rotated from recycled plastic bottles.
But does Manchester United know that the bottles recycled are so Yesterday’s green material? No, new thermal technology is being recycled Polyester fiber Enter polyester. And I am following the most important innovation in this emerging field, a chemical recycling process for a new startup, Reju.
Reju’s temporary offices and three and a half buildings will be just half an hour outside the centre of Frankfurt, which will be used for its industrial operations. In the middle is R&D and education, on the right is dePolymerized plants, on the left will be aboutPolymerization plant.
plasticincluding polyester, is formed by taking a single chemical called a monomer and forming chains to create the formation of a polymer. Essentially, the REJU process breaks down the polyester into its constituent chemicals (depolymerization) and then puts it in the chain again (repolymerization).
I wore a hard hat, vest, safety glasses and sneakers, and six other journalists and influencers, and could observe the interior of the discharge plant where the magic happened. (Reju received me on this trip and took on my trip.) Silver pipes were filled with small silos, from the vantage point on the first floor we could look up through the metal grid, through the panels and the pipes The courage to reach the top of the four-story building. The man in jeans and high visibility rotates the plants, tinkering with various mechanical settings at will, calling each other with Germans.
As I reported before, the fashion industry Dissatisfied With current polyester recycling paradigm. Only 0.3% of the materials used in fashion come from recycling sourcesand almost all water bottles are among them.
You will find that polyester is exactly the same as the pet plastic used in water bottles, just in different shapes (threads instead of bottles). Mechanically recycling pets (immersing them and reattacking) is not ideal because the process reduces the quality of the plastic, which makes it less flexible and high performance. It also requires pure pets, and clear plastic bottles are exemplary. Polyester textiles are by no means pure polyester.
The most common material mixture you find in old clothes is 70% polyester and 30% cotton. “But when you introduce the details, it’s actually 60% of the pet, 5% of the dye, 2% of the elastic dye, maybe a little nylon. Who knows?” said Antoni Mairata, chief technology officer of REJU, who is ready to walk through the factory .
My previous reports have shown that polyester can also contain plasticizers such as BPA, such as antimony, toxic metals PFAand as it moves around the world through factories, warehouses and container ships, it absorbs more unwelcome pollutants. That’s why we feed millions of transparent food-grade water bottles into recycled plants while dumping old polyester clothing into landfills.
