New process turns textile waste into chemical building blocks
(Photo TNO)
April 17, 2026 – No more of 73 percent of all textile waste in Europe end up incinerated or in landfills. Not because they are unusable, but because recycling technology has so far been unable to handle the messy reality of mixed textile waste: t-shirts with elastane, jeans with metal buttons, workwear with flame retardants. New TNO research is changing that. With knowledge built up from years of plastic waste research, now applied to textiles.
