The Lenzing Group, supplier of special fibers for the textile and nonwovens industry based in Austria, has entered into a cooperation with several partners in order to get one step closer to textile recycling and thus to the circular economy.
The partnership includes Austrian companies and non-profit organizations, including Lenzing’s logistics and sorting partner ARA (Altstoff Recycling Austria AG), the textile service provider Salesianer Miettex and Caritas, and the Swedish pulp manufacturer Södra. They want to work together to collect used household and clothing textiles, process them into cellulose and finally into new lyocell and viscose fibers.
As part of this pilot project, the used textiles collected by Salesianer Miettex that are not suitable for reuse are passed on to ARA before being delivered to Caritas for manual sorting in a recycling plant. The Caritas recycling plant offers more than 70 people with disabilities a secure job. After the sorting process, the textiles are delivered to Södra, where they are recycled and turned into OnceMore pulp. This process is a world first in the industrial recycling of mixed fiber textile waste. Lenzing will then use its Refibra technology to produce new lyocell and viscose fibers.
Goal: Promotion of a circular business model
“One company alone cannot solve the urgent problem of textile waste. Proactive partnerships like this enable us to make progress and achieve real system change,” says Sonja Zak, Head of Textile Sourcing & Cooperations at the Lenzing Group. “We are working hard to make our industries more sustainable and transform the textile business model from linear to circular, and facilitating this transition requires continued action across the industry.”
Lenzing and Södra have been working together in the field of textile recycling since 2021. The further developed OnceMore pulp is to be used, among other things, as a raw material for the production of Lenzing’s Tencel brand specialty fibers with Refibra technology. The goal is to reach an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tons of textile waste by 2027.
“The EU Action Plan focuses on waste and secondary raw materials to consolidate their role in the market. It is therefore important for the recycling industry to have a 360-degree view of all consumer goods. ARA has been significantly involved in the implementation of extended producer responsibility in Austria for 30 years. It therefore makes sense to bring this know-how to the textile sector as well. This means that in the future we will not only recycle packaging, but as many products as possible, including textiles,” adds Martin Prieler, CEO of ARA.