Make synthetic fabrics biodegrade to cut textile waste

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

The company manufactures denim and non-denim fabric at an integrated mill in Türkiye and employs between 251 and 1,000 people.

The waste problem the initiative addresses is a sector-level one. Material published by UN-Habitat for the 2025 International Day of Zero Waste sets out the scale: some 92 million tonnes of textile waste are generated worldwide each year, the equivalent of a rubbish truck of clothing incinerated or landfilled every second, and the pressure follows directly from a linear business model that drives both overproduction and overconsumption.(1)

The fibre mix is where the problem persists. Clothing and textile products account for 11 per cent of plastic waste, behind packaging and consumer goods, and synthetic fibres — polyester, nylon and elastane among them — made up around 67 per cent of production volumes in 2023.(1)

What happens to those garments is the specific gap. Only 8 per cent of textile fibres in 2023 came from recycled sources, and less than 1 per cent of the total fibre market comes from textile-to-textile recycling.(1)(2) Recycling, in other words, cannot be relied on as the answer for the great majority of textile waste, and the fibres that persist longest are the synthetic ones: elastane and polyester derivatives remain in the environment after the garment they were made into has been thrown away.

The company's response was to address the fibre itself rather than the collection system, on the reasoning that a material which does not persist after disposal removes the problem for the share of textile waste that recycling will never reach.

Location of the initiative: Malatya, Türkiye

The approach, developed under the concept name B210, modifies fabrics containing synthetic fibre so that they biodegrade in soil at end of life without generating toxicity. The name encodes the performance target: more than 99 per cent biodegradation within 210 days.

The starting point is what the fibre supply chain does not offer. Synthetic fibre suppliers do not produce, and in many cases cannot produce, biodegradable grades of the fibres used in stretch and performance fabrics. The modification therefore had to be made downstream, at fabric level inside the mill, rather than specified upstream from the fibre producer.

The technology renders synthetic fibres biodegradable so that the fabric breaks down when it is buried, rather than persisting as an inert residue. Toxicity was treated as a hard design constraint rather than a result to be measured afterwards: the requirement was that decomposition occurs without creating toxicity in the soil, because a material that fragments into a harmful residue solves nothing.

The concept is not tied to one article. Within the mill it applies to every fabric containing synthetic fibre, and both denim and non-denim applications have been produced. Fabrics containing elastane and polyester derivatives are the primary target, since these are the constructions that continue to sit in the environment once the product's life is over.

The property is not bought at the expense of the product range. The articles built on the concept are super stretch fabrics with no stated limit on elasticity, and they can be combined with the mill's other stretch technologies, so a buyer does not have to trade performance for end-of-life behaviour.

Evidence was placed outside the company. The biodegradability certificates for the fabrics developed under the concept were obtained from the Hong Kong operations of an international independent testing and certification laboratory, so that buyer confidence rests on third-party test results rather than on internal data, and a separate plant toxicity study was commissioned on the residue those tests leave behind.

Development moved from first trials to commercial volume rather than stopping at laboratory scale. First steps were taken in 2023, long-metrage production runs followed on standard mill equipment, and the fabrics were released as a distinct product line in the Spring Summer 24 collection.

Because the concept sits at fabric level and applies to any construction containing synthetic fibre, it can also be applied to the fabrics of customers whose own products contain synthetic fibres, opening joint development work with brands rather than remaining an internal article specification.

Figure 1: Test sample 76104D (65860D) before (A and B) and after (C and D) anaerobic biodegradation under ASTM D5511-18, with the laboratory's gas and mass balance recording 99.10 per cent biodegradation.

Figure 2: Test sample 76104D (65860D) before (A and B) and after (C and D) anaerobic biodegradation under ASTM D5511-18, with the laboratory's gas and mass balance recording 99.10 per cent biodegradation.

Figure 3: Wheat grown under OECD 208 in control soil and in soil carrying biodegraded fabric residue at 10, 100, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 mg/kg, with germination between 94 and 100 per cent across the five doses.

Sustainability impact

Climate

The initiative is not designed as an emissions reduction measure, and no emissions result is claimed for it over the period from the first production steps in 2023 to the commercial release of the product line in the Spring Summer 24 collection. Its climate relevance is indirect and sits in Scope 3, in the emissions associated with what happens to fabric after the garment made from it is discarded. Under the GHG Protocol that effect belongs to Category 12, end-of-life treatment of sold products; the company has not made the calculation, so no figure is attached to it.

The company's stated objective is to reduce the environmental pollution caused by textile waste that persists after disposal, given that less than 1 per cent of the fibre market comes from textile-to-textile recycling and the great majority of discarded clothing is landfilled or incinerated. Diverting material away from incineration is where an emissions effect would arise, since combustion of synthetic fibre releases the fossil carbon it contains.

Biodegradation is itself a carbon release pathway, and the certified test — begun on 15 June 2023 and reported on 8 April 2024 — shows its form. Over the 180 days the gas evolved from the fabric sample was 43.80 per cent methane and 45.70 per cent carbon dioxide, and the flask holding the 10.0757 g sample yielded 3.2901 g of methane and 9.5010 g of carbon dioxide against 0.3454 g and 1.1444 g from the inoculum blank run beside it. Because methane and carbon dioxide do not carry the same warming effect, the split between them matters as much as the total, so what is released and whether it is captured at the disposal site determine the net climate result. The company reports the absence of toxicity but no emissions balance.

Nature

The environmental purpose of the initiative is to reduce the pollution load that textile waste places on soil and water.

On land, fabrics containing elastane and polyester derivatives remain in the environment once the product has been discarded. Fabrics developed under the concept decompose when buried, and the design constraint was that they do so without generating toxicity in the surrounding soil.

Biodegradation was measured under ASTM D5511-18, the standard test method for anaerobic biodegradation of plastic materials under high-solids anaerobic digestion conditions. The construction submitted, sample 76104D (65860D), was declared as 57 per cent cotton, 20 per cent recycled cotton, 19 per cent CMD regenerated cellulosic fibre, 3 per cent of a bicomponent polyester fibre of the 400 series and 1 per cent elastane in a recycled-content grade, and weighed 597.8 g. It was exposed to a methanogenic inoculum drawn from anaerobic digesters running on pretreated household waste, pre-incubated for 1 week at 53°C and then incubated in the dark at 52°C (± 2°C). Testing began on 15 June 2023 and the report was issued on 8 April 2024.

The inoculum met the standard's conditioning requirements before the material was added: pH 7.85 against a required 7.5 to 8.5, Kjeldahl nitrogen 1.46 g/kg wet weight against a required 0.5 to 2 g/kg, dry solids at 105°C of 44.00 per cent against a required minimum of 20 per cent, and volatile solids at 550°C of 0.76 g/kg against a limit of 1 g/kg. The run was valid on the standard's own criterion, which requires the cellulose reference material to reach 70 per cent within 30 days with less than 20 per cent deviation between replicates: it reached 70.82 per cent on day 27.

The results are the substance of the case. At 180 days the fabric had biodegraded 99.10 per cent, against 99.45 per cent calculated for the cellulose reference over the same period, and the report's conclusion records the reference at 100 per cent. Net biogas volume from the fabric reached 10,500 mL against 3,400 mL from the inoculum blank at 180 days, and the reference produced 10,200 mL against 3,100 mL at 90 days. Mass loss was 98.94 per cent, an average initial weight of 10.0757 g falling to 0.1067 g; the cellulose reference against which the run was judged weighed 10.1785 g. The commercial claim built on this evidence is more than 99 per cent biodegradation within 210 days.

Absence of toxicity was established separately, under OECD 208, the terrestrial plant test for seedling emergence and seedling growth. A denim woven fabric declared as 85 per cent cotton, 11 per cent polyester, 3 per cent of the same 400 series bicomponent fibre and 1 per cent elastane, sample 65369D, was first biodegraded under ASTM D5511 and the residue mixed into natural soil at 10, 100, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 mg/kg. Wheat, Triticum aestivum, was sown at 25°C (± 4°C), 66 per cent (± 10 per cent) humidity and 25,000 lux with 16 hours of light; the standard evaluates the seedlings 14 to 21 days after 50 per cent emergence in the control group, and treats the test as valid where control emergence is at least 70 per cent and mean control survival at least 90 per cent. Germination was 100 per cent in the control and 100, 99, 99, 97 and 94 per cent across the five doses. Shoot weight moved from 0.1302 g in the control to 0.1004, 0.0994, 0.0922, 0.0878 and 0.0822 g, shoot length from 28 cm to 25, 24, 22, 22 and 24 cm, and root length from 20 cm to 18, 18, 16, 15 and 14 cm. The laboratory recorded no effect on plant growth and no visible damage to the plants. That report was received on 7 September 2022 and issued on 3 November 2022.

In water, the company's stated mechanism is that textile waste which breaks down underground no longer contributes to the microfibre load reaching water bodies, which is the route by which discarded synthetic textiles become a persistent aquatic pollutant. The plant test does not cover that pathway.

The company has since clarified the exposure behind that test: the residue used came from fabric biodegraded over 210 days, and the wheat was then grown for 90 days in the soil carrying it.

Business impact

Benefits

The primary business benefit is differentiation at material level. Because synthetic fibre suppliers do not offer biodegradable grades of the fibres concerned, a mill that can deliver the property itself holds a specification that cannot be sourced from the fibre market, and the company treats this as a technology that competitors have not been able to copy.

The differentiation is evidenced rather than asserted. The certificates record 99.10 per cent biodegradation at 180 days under ASTM D5511-18 and no phytotoxic effect on wheat under OECD 208, which is the form of evidence a brand's compliance function can act on, and the company presents the technology as showing that climate transition can be managed as an export opportunity rather than as a cost.

The concept applies to every fabric containing synthetic fibre in the mill, denim and non-denim, so the development effort is spread across the range rather than recovered from a single article, and it reached the commercial catalogue as a product line in the Spring Summer 24 collection rather than remaining a laboratory result.

It also creates a route to joint development. Any customer whose products contain synthetic fibre can have the concept applied to their fabrics, which converts a technical property into a business development conversation with brands rather than a line on a hangtag.

Senior management treats the work as the company's flagship project, which in practice means access to resources and to external representation at chief executive level.

Costs

In the medium term the project is funded from the research and development function's internal resources, and long-term continuity is planned to be covered by sales revenue from the fabrics concerned. That sequence is the principal financial dependency: until sales volume builds, the cost sits on the research and development budget rather than being carried by the product.

The development burden falls on the mill because the fibre supply chain does not deliver the property. Suppliers do not produce biodegradable grades of the synthetic fibres used, so the chemistry, the application and the process validation all had to be created internally, without a vendor package to procure.

Third-party certification is a recurring cost, and it is two test programmes rather than one: an anaerobic biodegradation test under ASTM D5511-18 read at 90 and 180 days, followed by a terrestrial plant test under OECD 208 on the residue that the first test leaves. Each new fabric construction brought under the concept requires its own evidence if the claim is to be made for it.

Elapsed time is a cost in its own right. Testing on the certified construction began on 15 June 2023 and the report was issued on 8 April 2024, so a construction cannot be qualified inside a normal sampling cycle and the development calendar has to be planned around test duration rather than around the season.

Scaling from first trials to long-metrage production consumed trial material and machine time, since the modification had to be shown to survive normal mill conditions rather than laboratory conditions.

Costs are contained by keeping the work inside two existing internal functions rather than creating a separate structure, by applying one concept across the whole synthetic-containing range instead of developing article-specific solutions, and by embedding the technology in existing research and development, production, sales and human resources processes so that it does not require standing incremental overhead.

Impact beyond sustainability and business

Co-benefits

The concept addresses the share of textile waste that collection and recycling systems do not reach. With only a fraction of discarded clothing recycled into new fibre, a fabric that does not persist after disposal is complementary to recycling rather than competing with it.

Because the property is delivered at fabric level, it can be extended to other companies' products through joint development, which makes it transferable across the sector rather than confined to one producer's range.

The work also demonstrates that a fabric producer can deliver a material property that its own upstream fibre suppliers do not offer, which shifts where in the value chain end-of-life performance can be engineered.

Potential side-effects

A biodegradable specification can create a moral hazard if it is read by consumers as permission to discard garments sooner. The stated problem includes garments being worn for a shorter time before disposal, and a material that breaks down after burial does not address that behaviour and could weaken the case for longevity if it is marketed carelessly.

Biodegradation depends on the conditions the material actually meets, and the certified conditions are specific. The result was obtained under high-solids anaerobic digestion at 52°C (± 2°C) with a methanogenic inoculum from digesters treating pretreated household waste — the conditions of a municipal solid waste digester, not those of a landfill, of garden soil or of the sea. The conditions under which the claim holds should be stated wherever the claim is made.

The toxicity evidence has a comparable boundary. It rests on one plant species, wheat, at doses up to 10,000 mg/kg of residue in soil. Germination fell from 100 per cent in the control to 94 per cent at the highest dose and shoot weight from 0.1302 g to 0.0822 g, which the laboratory judged to be no visible damage; a wider species panel and an aquatic endpoint would be needed before the finding could be generalised to the microfibre pathway the company describes.

Decomposition releases the carbon held in the fibre. Where the alternative disposal route was landfill rather than incineration, accelerating breakdown may change the timing and form of that release, and this has not been quantified.

A modification that makes synthetic fibres break down may interact with mechanical recycling streams, since a fabric designed to degrade is not necessarily a good feedstock for reprocessing. Whether the two end-of-life routes conflict has not been stated.

Typical business profile

The model suits vertically integrated fabric manufacturers producing constructions that contain synthetic fibre — elastane, polyester and their derivatives — and that control finishing chemistry in their own mills.

It requires a working research and development capability, because the property cannot be procured: fibre suppliers do not offer biodegradable grades of the fibres concerned, so the modification has to be created at fabric level by the producer.

Maturity requirements are high on chemistry and testing and moderate on equipment, since the concept was scaled to long-metrage runs on standard mill machinery.

It is most relevant to producers selling into markets where end-of-life performance is becoming a buyer specification, and to those able to fund the work from internal research and development budgets until product sales carry it.

Delivery engages research and development, product development, production, sales, finance and strategy functions.

Approach

1. Define the failure as persistence, not as recycled content: Identify which of the mill's constructions remain in the environment after disposal — here those containing elastane and polyester derivatives — and set the objective as removing that persistence rather than raising recycled input.

2. Establish what the fibre supply chain cannot deliver: Ask synthetic fibre suppliers directly whether a biodegradable grade is available; where it is not produced or cannot be produced, accept that the property has to be engineered downstream at fabric level.

3. Run the development jointly across the two internal functions: Pair the research and development function with the product development function so that laboratory chemistry and mill feasibility progress together rather than sequentially, which is what allowed the concept to move to production runs.

4. Set absence of toxicity as a hard constraint from the start: Require that the fabric decomposes in soil without creating toxicity, and design the chemistry against that constraint, so that biodegradation cannot be achieved by fragmenting the material into a harmful residue.

5. Commission independent biodegradability and toxicity certification: Obtain test certificates from an international third-party testing and certification laboratory — here an anaerobic biodegradation test under ASTM D5511-18 read at 90 and 180 days, followed by a terrestrial plant test under OECD 208 on the residue it leaves — because buyer acceptance and export positioning depend both on external evidence that the material breaks down and on evidence that what remains is not harmful.

6. Scale from first trials to long-metrage production: Take the modification onto standard mill equipment and produce full-length commercial runs — first steps in 2023, long-run production afterwards, and release as a product line in the Spring Summer 24 collection — to confirm that the property survives normal production conditions and reaches customers.

7. Extend the concept across the whole synthetic-containing range: Apply it to denim and non-denim constructions alike so that it becomes a platform available to any fabric containing synthetic fibre, and open it to customers' own articles through joint projects.

8. Embed the technology in four core processes: Build it into research and development, production, sales and human resources procedures, and assign a standing governance structure, so that continuity does not depend on the individuals who created it.

Stakeholders involved

• Project leads: Senior management treats the project as the company's flagship initiative, and the roles are explicitly divided. The chief executive holds external representation and ownership of the performance indicators, the research and development directorate holds technical custodianship, and the chief financial officer holds assurance of the resources. Under the research and development directorate's leadership, the strategy and business development, sales and finance teams meet at set intervals as the committees responsible for the project, which keeps commercial and financial decisions attached to the technical work rather than running behind it.

• Company functions: The project is the joint output of the research and development function and the product development function, working together on laboratory chemistry and mill application. Production carried the scale-up to long-metrage runs. Corporate integration was achieved by embedding the technology in research and development, production, sales and human resources processes, so that it is maintained as an operating procedure rather than as a project.

• Main providers: No external solution provider was engaged in development. Verification was placed with an international independent testing and certification laboratory, whose Hong Kong operations issued the biodegradability certificate under ASTM D5511-18 and the terrestrial plant toxicity report under OECD 208, both executed through an approved subcontractor laboratory within the same group. Synthetic fibre suppliers were a constraint rather than a partner, since they do not offer biodegradable grades of the fibres used.

• Other: The first phase was carried out entirely with internal resources and no external stakeholder participated. Customers enter at the next stage: any brand whose products contain synthetic fibre can have the concept applied to its fabrics, and joint projects on that basis are the intended route to wider adoption.

Key parameters to consider

The concept applies to any fabric containing synthetic fibre. Within the mill it has been applied to denim and non-denim constructions; fabrics containing elastane and polyester derivatives are the primary target because those are the ones that persist after disposal.

The performance parameter is stated in the concept name: more than 99 per cent biodegradation within 210 days. The certified results behind it are 99.10 per cent biodegradation and 98.94 per cent mass loss at 180 days under ASTM D5511-18, with no phytotoxic effect recorded under OECD 208.

The test conditions are a parameter in their own right: high-solids anaerobic digestion at 52°C with a methanogenic inoculum, rather than ambient soil, landfill or marine conditions. A claim made outside those conditions is not supported by this evidence.

The timeline is a working parameter: first steps in 2023, followed by long-metrage production and commercial release, which means the technology is past pilot stage and in production rather than in trial.

The property is delivered at fabric level, not fibre level, which is what makes it available to a mill whose upstream suppliers do not offer it — and equally what makes it dependent on the mill's own finishing capability.

Certification is construction-specific. Evidence exists for the constructions tested, and extending the claim to a new construction requires new testing on that construction.

Funding is staged: internal research and development resources in the medium term, sales revenue for long-term continuity.

Implementation and operations tips

Check the supply chain before starting development. The decision to engineer the property at fabric level followed directly from establishing that fibre suppliers do not offer biodegradable grades, and that finding is what justified the internal work.

Make toxicity a constraint rather than a test result. Designing against it from the outset avoids the outcome in which a material technically biodegrades but leaves a harmful residue, which would fail buyer scrutiny at the point the claim matters most.

Test the residue, not only the fabric. The biodegradation result and the plant test on what the biodegradation leaves behind are two different studies under two different standards, and a claim that a material disappears is worth little without the second.

Put the evidence outside the company early. Independent certification from a recognised testing house is what converts a laboratory result into something a brand customer can act on, and it should be planned into the development timeline rather than added afterwards — the biodegradation study alone ran to 180 days.

Scale to long-metrage runs before making claims. A modification that works on samples but not under normal mill conditions cannot support a commercial specification, and the transition to full-length runs is where most of the process learning occurs.

Divide governance explicitly. Separating external representation and indicator ownership, technical custodianship and funding assurance between named roles prevented the project from depending on a single sponsor, and embedding it in existing processes is what makes it durable.

State the statistics with their sources. The waste figures that justify the project come from external publications, and a case for investment built on them should carry the citations with it.

External links

• Corporate sustainability reports

Sources

(1) UN-Habitat, “The International Day of Zero Waste — Key messages” (30 March 2025)

(2) WRAP, “Transform textiles”