Executive Summary:

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This report is the first in a three-part series by the Denim Deal, aimed at addressing the costs, challenges, and misconceptions surrounding post-consumer recycled (POCR) cotton in the denim industry. Drawing on literature reviews, market analysis, and expert surveys, the series explores how POCR cotton can support a more sustainable and circular textile economy.

Denim remains one of the most popular apparel categories worldwide, but its growing demand contributes significantly to textile waste, with over 2.16 million metric tonnes of denim being discarded annually, most ending in landfills or incineration. Recycling this waste offers a pathway to resource recovery and environmental impact reduction.

The report focuses primarily on mechanical recycling, the most established and scalable method for denim waste. Although mechanical recycling shortens fibre length and can lower yarn quality, research and industry trials show that denim containing 20–30% POCR cotton maintains quality comparable to virgin cotton.

Economic factors remain a key barrier. Recycled cotton currently struggles to compete with virgin materials, and limited transparency around costs fuel its misconceptions. However, upcoming Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation and rising raw material prices are expected to make recycling more economically viable. Studies also suggest that large-scale textile-to-textile recycling in Europe could create over 15,000 jobs by 2030, underscoring both the sustainability and economic potential of this transition.

Critical challenges include fragmented supply chains, inefficient manual sorting, fibre and contamination identification and lack of consumer awareness. Manual sorting alone accounts for 30% of recycling costs and presents ineffective contamination identification of waste textiles. Innovations such as automated sorting (e.g., Valvan’s NIR-based systems), lubricant pretreatments, and Smart Creel weaving technology are improving the overall processing and quality consistency. 

g circularity in the denim industry.empirical data and cost transparency remain limited. This initial report establishes the foundation for a deeper examination of cost structures, to be explored in the next parts of the series. Ultimately, greater transparency, automation, and technological innovation are essential to scaling POCR cotton use, reducing costs, and accelerating circularity in the denim industry.

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Threads of Truth - The Real Cost of Post-Consumer Recycled Cotton: Issue One

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This is the first issue of a three-part series in which the Denim Deal explores the costs of post-consumer recycled (POCR) cotton, aiming to debunk the current myths and misconceptions regarding POCR cotton. Through literature, market research, and a survey amongst industry experts, three reports have been created to help highlight the advantages, challenges and future prospects of POCR cotton within the denim industry. This report introduces the current opportunities and challenges faced when using POCR, alongside highlighting the lack of transparency and access to information in relation to the costs of POCR cotton.

Denim is one of the most commonly worn items of apparel and has become an essential part of past, present and future fashion. Worn globally by individuals of all ages and genders and suitable for a broad range of seasons and events, it is an integral clothing item in nearly everyone’s wardrobe (1). However, with the consistent and growing popularity of denim, the industry faces consequences. Nearly 2.16 million metric tonnes of denim waste are generated annually, with most ending up in landfills or incineration (2–5). This results in the complete depletion of their contents and wasting what could be a valuable resource (6). Therefore, measures need to be taken to deal with the waste issues and ensure the reuse of valuable material resources at the end of their life. 

Waste denim and cotton can be mechanically or chemically recycled in a fibre-to-fibre closed-loop system (7). Mechanical recycling is the most established recycling process, with lower costs than chemical or bio-based processes and will be the main focus within this three-part series. In addition, it is currently the most scalable process, which is necessary for an industry as large as denim (8,9). Fibre quality is often determined by its length, fineness and evenness (10). When mechanically recycling textile waste, the material is cut, shredded and opened up into fibres. It has a low to medium output due to the fibre length shortening and the increase in short fibre content, which can pose further challenges when spinning the fibres into yarns. Additional virgin or alternative materials are often needed to make the fibres spinnable (11–13). Although the output of mechanically recycled fibres is lower than that of chemically recycled fibres, it has been proven that using 20-30% of POCR content in denim does not impact the end quality. Both academic research studies and work done by the Denim Deal and their members have proven this by incorporating a minimum of 20% POCR cotton in their denim products, resulting in equal quality compared to products made from solely virgin cotton (5,14,15). 

Few economic incentives exist for recycling large amounts of post-consumer textile waste, and economic viability strongly depends on the costs of recycling compared to the cost of virgin materials on the market. Regulations such as the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) can give the needed incentives for recycling. The EPR regulation will make producers finally responsible for treating their waste streams, including the end-of-life of their products. The imbalance between the costs of recycling compared to virgin materials will likely shift in the near future due to upcoming legislation and increasing prices on both natural and fossil-based materials (10). 

Current reports conclude that large-scale textile-to-textile recycling in Europe holds a key to making the textile industry more sustainable and that such an industry could be economically beneficial, generating over 15,000 new jobs within the EU between now and 2030 (13). Supply chain capabilities hold one of the main keys to enhancing sustainability as well as economic viability in the emerging textile-to-textile recycling industry. Such capabilities are needed to ensure cost efficiency and the necessary infrastructure in conjunction with waste collection and sorting. The availability of feedstock for recycling plays a key role as a success factor, emphasising the necessity for proper collection and sorting of textile waste. Key stakeholders within textile recycling are more fragmented, resulting in complexities and challenges related to transparency. Additionally, from a consumer’s perspective, the benefits of textile recycling can be unclear. Therefore, many households are generally less educated in how to deal with textile waste compared to other waste streams, such as paper or plastic (13). This can then contribute to a large amount of textile waste ending up in landfill instead of textile recycling streams, impacting consistent feedstock streams (6). This underscores the need to raise consumer awareness about textile waste and proper end-of-life disposal, ensuring materials can effectively be used as textile recycling feedstock.

Next to that, the sorting of post-consumer textiles relies heavily on manual operation, which is inefficient, labour-intensive and poses risks to workers (20). The labour costs account for 30% of the entire textile recycling costs. Moreover, the sorting process also faces many bottlenecks, such as the identification of waste components, fibre composition and other characteristics such as finishes, contaminations or multiple textile layers. Due to uncertainties and a lack of transparency regarding time, quality, contamination, origin of production and end-of-life, sorting and recycling face further challenges, increasing the overall cost of the process (21–23). Therefore, by improving transparency, automated processing, accurate fibre and contamination identification, the process will be made more efficient and will effectively reduce costs.

Developments and technological advancements have been made in improving the overall fibre and yarn quality using POCR cotton by optimising the sorting, mechanical recycling, spinning and weaving processes (10,16). Technological advancements that aid the mechanical recycling process include the innovative automated sorting and cutting machines developed by Valvan. These machines employ two types of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) from different angles to ensure better identification of material composition. In addition, the technology lets users specify unwanted materials such as hard accessories or thick seams, which are then identified, cut and filtered out, ensuring the best possible material output for recycling (17). Lindström et al. utilised polyethylene glycol (PEG) based lubricants as pretreatment agents for mechanical recycling. Thus, reducing interfibre cohesion and aiding the overall disassembly and tearing of the textiles (11). Another key innovation that can help with the weaving of POCR cotton is the Smart Creel by Vanderwiele. The Smart Creel can individually control the tension of each warp thread and reduce the amount of material waste in production. Moreover, an example of a company utilising this technology with POCR materials in Enshcede Textielstad (18,19). Through such technological advancements and by incorporating post-consumer waste in denim production, positive contributions are being made in dealing with the waste and raw material resource crisis. However, it is important to note that further research and development are necessary in identifying contaminations such as finishes. This is vital in ensuring higher quality and cleaner feedstock for recycling, while also contributing to cost reductions.

While current literature and common speculation suggest that POCR cotton is more expensive than virgin cotton, many sources make the claim without providing clear evidence or transparent figures to support it (9,24). The following part of this series will investigate the costs of virgin cotton compared to those of POCR cotton in more depth, questioning the validity of cost assumptions, as well as present the results of a survey conducted with industry experts to attempt to debunk the costs of POCR cotton.

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