Oct 7, 2024

How Quality and Scalability Drive Recover’s Developments Kate Jones for Sourcing Journal x Rivet Closing the loop is quickly becoming a mandate for the fashion industry as legislation rolls out across the globe. “Regulation is coming,” Boris Mercier, senior vice president, marketing at Recover , told SJ Studios director Lauren Parker during a one-on-one chat at Sourcing Journal x Rivet Sustainability LA. “You have to find different sustainable ways and materials.” Recover is ready and primed to deliver on this need with commercial-level circular material production that also meets the industry’s desire for natural fibers. Although Recover the company was officially founded in December 2020 when it was spun off from Ferre Yarns, its experience in mechanically recycling cotton goes back more than seven decades. From its start, Recover’s innovation focus has been on addressing two challenges of mechanical recycling: quality and scalability—both of which it has overcome, said Mercier. Supporting the scaling front, Recover’s staff has grown from 10 to about 350 employees, including a team dedicated to ensuring that feedstock is consistent and up to standards. Recover’s original factory is in Spain, and the company expanded its operations with a facility in Bangladesh for proximity to garment production waste streams, reducing the costs and footprint tied to shipping. The “state of the art” Bangladesh facility has 10 recycling lines, helping to serve brands that require large volumes. Hinting at what is next, Mercier said Recover will be expanding its capacities in “different markets.” Providing advice to companies that are considering recycled inputs for the first time, Mercier noted denim is a good entry point. “I would start with denim, because denim is exciting. It’s exciting to tell a story about it,” said Mercier. “Honestly, it’s important to do it, but it’s also important to have everybody engaged within the company as [well as] your customers.” Related Stories Recover also got its start in denim with a post-consumer waste program alongside G-Star back in 2013. Today, the company has two post-industrial and post-consumer products that are used in the denim industry: RCotton and RDenim, which respectively use cotton textile waste and denim textile waste as inputs. In addition to telling a denim-to-denim story, RDenim offers a slightly lower cost than RCotton. “That’s always a cost to innovation and to new ways,” said Mercier. “But the reality is that Recover recycled cotton fiber is quite good and cost competitive to implement.” He added that studies show consumers are willing to pay a bit more for sustainability, covering the slight price increase. Although mechanical recycling might not be as “exciting” as chemical recycling since it has been around longer, it has benefits including energy efficient, almost water-free processes. Mercier noted these two methods can coexist and be combined in a single product by blending mechanically recycled and chemically recycled fibers together. For instance, RDenim was recently on the global stage in the Reet Aus-designed outfits made for Estonia’s Olympic and Paralympic teams. Made from 50 percent Recover cotton and 50 percent Tencel Lyocell with Refibra technology, the collection included denim shorts, skirts, jeans, jackets and tote bags as well as T-shirts. There is still the need to change consumer perception around recycled materials, which can carry associations with waste. Recover’s brand image has opted for a more “modern vision” of recycling. “For many people, recycling is the typical cardboard recycled paper that you see, because we’ve grown with that and we’ve seen that,” said Mercier. “So you have this perception in people that it’s the same for the rest, for textile, which is not true at all.” Read More About