Energy, not feedstock, sets recycling impacts

Chemical recycling is often presented as the apex solution to the textile industry’s sustainability problem. Break materials back to their molecular building blocks, rebuild them again, and the system closes. Waste disappears, virgin inputs are displaced, and circularity is achieved. It is an appealing narrative because it feels complete. The chemistry is elegant, the diagrams are tidy, and the solution appears self-contained.

But that sense of containment is misleading.

Chemical recycling is not a material solution that happens to consume energy. It is an energy system that happens to produce materials. Until the industry fully internalises that distinction, it will continue to overestimate what recycling can deliver on its own and underestimate the conditions required for it to work at all.