How is cotton recycled?

The recycling process is quite simple and requires no chemical substances.

This process has been witnessed by SGS laboratory. The presence of the “GREEN CITY COTTON” label inside your product certifies the recycled origin of the used material.

There are three different sources that feeds our recycled cotton network:

The cropping of widths after weaving, in general, this cotton is unbleached
Leftover pieces cut before assembly of clothing (such as T-shirt collars, in general, this cotton is dyed)
Collection of used clothing (of all colours and mixed)

SORTING: collected clothing is sorted by colour, manually (and patiently), there is no chemical treatment, all red clothes will be converted into red threads, etc.

SHREDDING: the collected clothing/fabric are shredded to make non-woven fibres. The process is purely mechanical; the pieces of cloth come into a kind of drum-chopper and come out as "Candy floss" whose visual appearance is very close to raw cotton after harvest. Because these fibres were chopped, some are shorter than the new cotton fibres, what justifies the addition of longer recycled PET fibres to increase the resistance of the threads. The fibres are put together in big cotton bales.

KNITTING or WEAVING: the bales of recycled cotton (90%) are put together with similar bales of recycled PET fibres (10%) in the opening room, apart of this only difference, the weaving or knitting process is 100% identical to the knitting/weaving process of new cotton:

Carding: pulling fibres into parallel alignment to form a thin web
Combing: shorter fibres and impurities are removed
Roving: the sliver is pulled out to a thinner strand and given a slight twist
Spinning: the last process in yarn manufacturing. Yarns are wound into bobbins, ready for weaving or knitting
Weaving or knitting: 2 different ways to turn yarns into harder or softer fabric. It is in this phase that the resistance of the thread is crucial, the shorter is the fibre, the thicker the thread will be. With thick threads, we make thick fabric. Obviously, we produce more denim than lace with recycled cotton.

To learn more about how is cotton recycled?

click here

To learn more about how are pet bottles recycled?

click here

To learn more about how is PP recycled?

click here

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