All our post-consumer textiles are collected and sorted, by rewearables and recyclables, (roughly) by composition and by color. Then the textiles are stripped from non-recyclable pieces such as zippers and buttons. The waste materials from this process (~17% of the total volume) are processed according to environmental regulation. The cleaned textiles are then cut and pulled into strings of fibre.
The yarn is spun by the Spanish firm Recover, trusted worldwide because of their long history in recycling and because they are third party certified for highest labor and environmental standards. These fibres are mixed in a huge room with recycled PET from bottles and are carded, spun and twisted into 20/2 Nm yarn for the production of new textiles (10-15 % waste in recycling and spinning process).
By mixing the post-consumer textiles sorted by color, 80 % of the dyeing process that would be necessary otherwise with virgin raw materials can be avoided. And it is so cool, any color of the Pantone color range can be made.
Finally the yarns are transported to weavers and knitters to produce different types of textile products.
NB. The yarn is certified GRS, global compact and Oeko-tex 100. Since Oeko-tex does not make a difference between post industrial and post consumer textiles the yarn has been additionally tested ( ph, azo dyes and formaldehyde).
