Recycling tech firm Worn Again lands £5m backing

A company with a mission to tackle the world’s plastic crisis and the problem of textiles heading to landfill has secured a seven-figure investment.

Following six years of research and development, Worn Again Technologies is emerging from the lab to bring its patented polymer recycling tech to market.

The London-based firm raised £5m to accelerate its offering, which it believes could ‘crack the code’ on the circularity of raw materials in the textiles and apparel industry worldwide.

Worn Again’s process separates, decontaminates and extracts polyester polymers and cellulose (from cotton) from non-reusable textiles, as well as plastic packaging and bottles. Extracted materials can go back into new products as part of a repeatable process.

The aim is to produce polyester and cotton for products that are comparable in quality to those made with non-recycled resources, enabling competitive pricing.

Today, less than 1% of non-wearable textiles are turned back into new textiles, according to Worn Again, due to the technical and economic limitations of current recycling methods.

Chief exec Cyndi Rhoades said: “There are enough textiles and plastic bottles ‘above ground’ and in circulation today to meet our annual demand for raw materials to make new clothing and textiles.

“With our dual polymer recycling technology, there will be no need to use virgin oil by-products to make new polyester and the industry will be able to radically decrease the amount of virgin cotton going into clothing by displacing it with new cellulose fibres recaptured from existing clothing.”

Worn Again Technologies’ chief scientific officer, Dr. Adam Walker, commented: “The solution to the world’s plastics problem is not to stop using plastic altogether.

“We have a solution to address the burgeoning need for recycling non-rewearable textiles and plastics and we’ve been clamouring to get on with it for many years.”

He continued: “This [£5m] investment, combined with the increasing geopolitical awareness of the need for this technology, is enabling us to push through the scale-up and validation work to reach the market on an accelerated timescale.”

The catalyst for the investment was fashion group H&M, which is now joined in backing Worn Again by partners including chemical engineering giant Sulzer Chemtech, Mexico-based garment manufacturer Himes Corporation, textiles producer Directex and Russian entrepreneur Miroslava Duma’s Future Tech Lab.