Cyndi Rhoades: Worn Again Technologies

Worn Again Technologies is a pioneering polymer recycling technology for polyester and cotton with a vision to eradicate textiles waste and to enable circularity for the global textiles industry.

THE PROBLEM

Over 60m tonnes of polyester and cotton go into making new textiles annually. This is expected to increase to 90m tonnes by 2030. Meanwhile, over 50m tonnes of textiles go to landfill each year globally, meaning we’re throwing out almost as much as we make. The technical and economic limitations of current textile recycling methods are resulting in less than 1% textiles being used to make new textiles.

THE INNOVATION

Worn Again Technologies was born from a vision to enable the ‘circularity of raw materials’ for clothing and textiles, accelerating us towards a waste-free world. Our 1st of its kind technology can separate and reprocess both pure and blended cotton-and-polyester (together representing 80% of all textiles) into recaptured raw materials to go back into new textiles at virgin equivalent quality with no price premium to manufacturers, brands or the consumer. This means our solution can increase the recycling of textiles exponentially from the current 1%, enabling a truly circular solution.

THE VISION

We want to reduce textile waste making it to landfill. The outputs from our recycling process are comparable in quality to their virgin counterparts and the aim is to compete, if not undercut, the price of virgin resources, providing a higher profit margin for producers and no premium to the ensuing value chain, brands or consumers.