Recycled polyester makers partner with Ambercycle to boost sustainable fashion

Virgin, a well-known brand, has joined forces with a company called The Far Eastern Group, which specializes in making recycled polyester textiles. Their aim is to support the growth of sustainable practices in the fashion industry. They are doing this by teaming up with Ambercycle, a company that focuses on circular polyester, which is made from used textile waste.

Their main goal in this partnership is to help Ambercycle grow its circular polyester, known as cycora, which is produced from old textile waste. This investment represents the first step in a bigger plan to create a textile-to-textile ecosystem. Juliana Pidner Hsu, from Drive Catalyst, said that shifting towards a more sustainable fashion industry requires the scaling up of textile-to-textile regeneration.

Ambercycle points out that while circular textile solutions are advancing, there’s a need for continuous development of infrastructure to make these solutions more widely adopted. This includes building a global infrastructure for collecting and distributing discarded textiles to facilities that can use them to create new textiles. It also involves making sustainable textiles more diverse and readily available for fashion brands and designers.

Shay Sethi, the co-founder and CEO of Ambercycle, emphasized the importance of integration across the entire value chain to make circular fashion more widespread. The partnership brings together The Far Eastern Group’s 70 years of experience in polyester manufacturing with Ambercycle’s expertise in materials innovation. Their goal is to promote circular and eco-friendly practices in the apparel industry.