Non-virgin materials are materials regenerated from discarded products through the process of recycling. Examples include recycled post-consumer materials such as recycled denim, or recycled polyester manufactured from ocean waste plastic. However, textile-to-textile recycling (as opposed to e.g. PET bottle-to-textile-recycling) includes numerous technological challenges and most textiles are still recycled manually by the process of shredding. This results in shorter fibers and lower-quality yarn. Non-virgin fibers are therefore mostly blended with virgin fibers to balance the quality of the final material. 100% non-virgin materials are still relatively rare.(1-5) (NB: Valid at the time of writing, December 2019)
NON-VIRGIN MATERIALS
