Inditex, which owns brands including Zara, Bershka and Pull&Bear, will partner with Los Angeles based material cycles firm Ambercycle in order to scale textile to textile recycled polyester.
The company has signed a three year agreement worth around £70 million with Ambercycle in order to buy a significant proportion of the annual production of cycora, which is an innovative material made from post-industrial consumer polyester waste.
The collaboration is part of Inditex’s Sustainability Innovation Hub, an innovation platform which works alongside start-ups, academic institutions and tech centres to help promote and scale new materials.
Each proposal is evaluated based on a set of criteria which looks at considerations such as circularity, biodiversity, and animal welfare as well as undergoing an environmental lifecycle analysis
In addition, Zara Athleticz is launching its first capsule collection in collaboration with Ambercycle, which features technical pieces crafted with around 50% cycora.
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Overall, the brand aims to have 100% of its textile products made with materials that have a smaller environmental footprint by 2030.
It comes after appearing among retailers called out for dumping or burning clothing which was returned for recycling.
Ambercycle’s goal is to enable circularity by replacing virgin polyester with textile-to-textile regenerated cycora. Our partnership with Inditex represents a monumental leap towards realising circularity at scale in the fashion industry,” said Ambercycle CEO Shay Sethi.
Inditex CSO Javier Losada added: “At Inditex we are committed to achieving circularity in the fashion industry. We want to drive innovation to scale up new solutions, processes and materials to achieve textile to textile recycling”.
“Ambercycle’s groundbreaking molecular regeneration technology transforms end of life textiles into new materials, effectively reducing waste and emissions in the production cycle”.
