There is a need for a rapid and systematic change in how we produce and recycle the products we use in our daily lives. Around the world, there’s a large existing network of factories all set up to manufacture products and many people who work in them. So how can we make the best use of that infrastructure? What if we could keep those factories running and change them from producing non-circular products to producing products for the circular economy?
Our industrial journey began in 2018 when we moved into Casco’s old factory in Kristinehamn, Sweden, and repurposed it to produce our material Circulose®. Circulose® is a dissolving pulp made out of 100% textile waste and is today utilized by many of the world’s biggest fashion houses in their garment production. We are scaling up our operations, and this year we are opening our commercial factory in Sundsvall. The plant is a former paper mill and when the operation was closed down in 2020, close to 700 people lost their livelihood. Since then, Renewcell has been able to rehire original staff as well as keep the majority of the machinery. Our recycling process is designed for existing machines and existing know-how to deliver a product into existing value chains. We establish ourselves at ’brownfield’ sites where we can reuse buildings, infrastructure, equipment, utilities, and, most importantly, knowledge. We made sure our disruption of this industry has been mindful and now we’d like to share what we’ve done in the hope that it inspires others.
It goes without saying that the fashion and textile industry causes a lot of environmental damage. It sends toxic chemicals into our environment and annually 200 million trees are cut down to be used as a raw material in garment production. Of the 6.5 million tonnes of wood pulp produced annually, 3.3 million tonnes (which is approximately half of the entire production) come from Ancient and Endangered Forests, such as the carbon-rich peatlands of Indonesia and old-growth boreal forests of Canada. Fighting against this development, we are hoping to produce 360,000 tonnes of Circulose® by 2030, meaning that in a few years, we will be able to recycle the equivalent of more than a billion garments per year. As our raw material is people's discarded clothing and production waste, we don’t have to cut down old growth forests to produce our material. This also means that we are able to recycle textiles made from our product time and time again, creating a circular value chain.
It's hard to convince someone that a circular economy in fashion is a bad idea. Who doesn't want to save materials and cause less harm to our environment? Business and entrepreneurship can be an engine for good and not just an extraction machine. Renewcell is paving the way for other industries to follow and we’ll be sharing these lessons on the We Don’t Have Time platform as a way to build momentum.
If you have any questions or ideas for how we can scale our impact, leave a comment and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Keep sharing solutions and together we can do what it takes to create a more sustainable world.
Read more about our industrial evolution:
https://www.renewcell.com/en/industrial-evolution/
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85 w
I am great pleasure to know such a wonderful exciting recycling industry that fits well in circular economy sustainability. May I know that whether you r using only cotton fiber and many more like silk, linen, polyester, banana stem, eucalyptus, hemp, bast fibre and so on.
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85 w
At Renewcell, we take both pre- and post-consumer feedstock with a high cellulose content. This means that clothes made from materials such as cotton and viscose are used in our chemical recycling process. Viscose and cotton represent around a third of the textile market and thus make up much of the clothes we recycle at present. In that way, we have plenty of waste to use in years to come.
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87 w
Amazing work, a great example for all industries, innovative thinking and sustainable social environmental and economics. !!!
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88 w
Very inspiring, excellent work!
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88 w
Amusing
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88 w
Indeed we should cause less harm to our planet! Keep up that momentum of industrial evolution of creating more sustainable world. I love your name too Renewcell...It speaks volumes of how we can renew more.
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88 w
This is taking circularity to the next level, fantastic work!
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88 w
Incredible work!
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88 w
I wonder what other sectors can use this concept of reusing existing infrastructure. I know that oil drills can be used for geothermal energy. There is so much time and money to be potentially saved on finding more opportunities like this!