French sporting goods chain Decathlon has teamed up with the Belgian textile recycling company Resortecs to develop a recyclable swimwear collection.
The collection addresses the main problem with recycling swimwear to date, which has been that swimwear fabrics usually have high elastane content, but elastane cannot yet be separated from the yarns and recycled. Decathlon has therefore developed Negombo, a recyclable fabric that guarantees elasticity without the use of elastane.
Despite this, elastic bands are still required for cut-outs in swimwear. These elastic bands cannot be processed by the recyclers and block the recycling of the products. This is where Resortecs comes into play.
The special Resortecs technology for thermally dissolvable sewing threads, Smart Stitch, combined with the thermal disassembly solution Smart Disassembly, enables the efficient separation of the elastic bands from the main fabric at the end of the garment’s life cycle.
Acerina Trejo Machin, chief technology officer at Resortecs, explained: “Resortecs’ active disassembly process maximises the recyclability of swimwear. Our technology enables fully automated dismantling without manual intervention at a rate of up to ten tonnes per day. This results in an impressive 63 percent increase in material recovery and is ten times faster than conventional methods.”
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.DE. Translation and edit by: Rachel Douglass.