The global sports company, PUMA is scaling up its textile recycling innovation, Re:Fibre by replacing recycled polyester with Re:Fibre technology in all PUMA football club and Federation replica jerseys from 2024.
Since the launch of the pilot in 2022 – which saw PUMA produce recycled training jerseys for their sponsored football clubs, Re:Fibre technology has been used to create Switzerland and Morocco replica kits for the Women’s World Cup, as well as Girona’s 2023/24 season Third kit.
From 2024 onwards, official PUMA football replica jerseys, including those for the Euro and Copa America tournaments will be manufactured using Re:Fibre recycled materials made of old garments and factory waste, rather than only recycled plastic bottles.
Through its Re:Fibre programme, PUMA will address the challenge of textile waste via a long-term solution for recycling. The technology also looks to diversify the fashion industry’s main source of recycled polyester in garments to become less reliant on clear plastic bottles.
The Re:Fibre process uses any polyester material – from factory offcuts, faulty goods to pre-loved clothes which allows new garments to be recycled from any colour textile to any colour desired.
The four step process includes:
Collect and Sort: Collecting and sorting textile waste and other previously wasteful materials.
Shred and Mix: Shredding and mixing the collected materials down to the minimum.
Dissolve, Filter, and Polymerize: Melting down the shredded polyester and ridding them or previous dyes through a chemical recycling process.
Melt, Spin, Knit, and Sew: The melting allows the newly produced polymers to become ready to be spun and sewn into shape to create good as new Re:Fibre fabric which can be recycled again and again.
“Our wish is to have 100% of product polyester coming from textile waste,” said Anne-Laure Descours, chief sourcing officer at PUMA.
“Textile waste build up in landfills is an environmental risk. Rethinking the way we produce and moving towards a more circular business model is one of the main priorities of our sustainability strategy.”
To help make the technical process of RE:FIBRE more digestible for the everyday consumer who wants to know more, PUMA has harnessed the storytelling power of Computer Generated Imagery to take viewers through the RE:FIBRE process, right down to the molecular chemistry at work.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS7rr6W6lk0[/embedyt]
The video builds on the brand’s ongoing commitment to ensure PUMA’s sustainability initiatives are simplified for everyone to engage with. This comes after research conducted by PUMA found that 71% of young people felt their voices were not being heard when it comes to the environment and would like to see brands making more commitments (49%), communicating their goals better (40%) and being more transparent (34%).
As part of this commitment to communicate better, PUMA released The RE:GEN REPORTS podcast in June 2023. Making dense information in their Sustainability Report more accessible and tailored to a Gen Z audience.
