The process, developed in cooperation with the company Avantium, starts with fully removing all cotton from the fabric using superconcentrated hydrochloric acid at room temperature. The cotton is converted into glucose, which can be used as a feedstock for biobased products such as renewable plastics. The remaining polyester fibers can be reprocessed using available polyester recycling methods.

The research was led by Prof. Gert-Jan Gruter, who heads the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group at the UvA's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS) as a part time professor. Gruter is Chief Technology Officer at Avantium where he leads the development of renewable and circular polymer materials and technologies that are key to transforming our fossil-based economy into a renewable, bio-based economy.

"Being able to recover glucose from the cotton in textile waste is a crucial contribution to this, as glucose is a key bio-based feedstock. Currently, it is produced from starch from corn and wheat. If and when we will be producing plastics from biomass on a large scale, the world will need a lot of non-food glucose."

Equally important, the process now presented in the paper provides a solution to the mammoth problem of recycling textile waste. According to Gruter, it is the first effective method for recycling both cotton and polyester components of polycotton with high efficiency.