Recycled polyester, most known as RPET, has become fashion’s short cut. It shows up in capsule collections, in ESG reports, and “conscious” edits. On the surface, the story sounds simple: recycling is better than virgin. Pick recycled polyester whenever you can and your virgin polyester environmental impact problem is solved.
But the reality is more complicated.
Polyester is still the backbone of global fibre production, accounting for around 54% of the market in 2022, and most of that is still fossil-based virgin material. Recycled polyester has grown, but according to Textile Exchange’s Materials Market reporting, recycled textiles overall represented only about 7.9% of the total fibre market in 2022, with pre- and post-consumer recycled textiles below 1%.
Recycled polyester (rPET) does reduce impact compared with virgin polyester. But those reductions are conditional, heavily dependent on feedstock, energy mix and system boundaries, and they do not change the reality: we are still talking about a plastic fibre in a fast-growing system.
As Jeanine Ballone, Founder & CEO of World Collective, puts it:
“Recycled polyester is progress, not a finish line. It’s a better version of the same material system, and that system still has limits. The brands who treat it as a tool in a broader sourcing strategy, not a halo, will be the ones who actually move their impact in the right direction.”
Instead of asking “Is RPET good or bad?”, the question should be: How does recycled polyester and virgin polyester actually perform on impact, availability, risk and verification? Where does it realistically fit in your material portfolio?
Polyester Nowadays: Scale and Dependence
Instead of jumping straight into impact charts, it helps to get clear on what we’re really comparing when we say “recycled polyester vs virgin polyester” in a sourcing context.
Virgin polyester is made directly from fossil-based feedstocks (oil or gas), produced through a global supply chain that’s been optimized for decades around cost, consistency, and scale. Its biggest advantage for brands is reliability: predictable performance, stable processing behaviour, and broad availability across regions, price tiers, and applications.
Recycled polyester is chemically the same polymer, but it starts from waste rather than virgin fossil inputs. In fashion today, most rPET comes from post-consumer PET bottles, collected and processed into new fibre. A smaller but growing share is coming from pre- and post-consumer textile waste through textile-to-textile initiatives, but these supply streams are still emerging and often more variable.
A big complication: most fabrics in the market aren’t 100% polyester. They’re often blends (poly-cotton, poly-viscose, poly-elastane) or polyester combined with finishes, coatings, and dyes. That makes textile-to-textile recycling harder because the feedstock isn’t uniform. Even when blended textiles can be processed, it can be difficult to separate fibre types cleanly, and the output may be more variable.
Furthermore, it also adds a traceability problem: once textile waste is collected, sorted, and processed in bulk, it’s often not realistic to pinpoint exactly where it came from unless the supply chain is built with strong chain-of-custody and documentation. In short: with blended and post-use textiles, “recycled” becomes harder to verify and easier to misrepresent without robust controls.
Recycling Polyester: The 2 Most Used Methods And Its Implications
In practice, two recycling routes show up most often in fashion sourcing. It changes quality, scalability, claims risk, and long-term supply security.
1) Mechanical Recycling (dominant today)
Mechanical recycling typically involves sorting and washing PET (most often bottles), shredding it into flakes, then melting and extruding it into filament or staple fibre. This is the backbone behind most “recycled polyester” claims currently on the market.
Implications, risks, and limitations
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Each melt step can shorten polymer chains, which can reduce strength and consistency unless “boosted” with additives or blended with virgin content.
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Labels, dyes, residues, and mixed materials can lower quality or force stricter feedstock requirements. That narrows what can realistically be recycled at scale.
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Mechanical systems are generally better at turning clean, consistent inputs into fibre. Mixed or low-grade inputs often get diverted into lower-value applications.
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Achieving bright whites, ultra-fine deniers, or very high tenacity can be harder and more variable versus virgin PET, depending on feedstock and process control.
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rPET may reduce upstream footprint versus virgin, but it’s still polyester.
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Bottle-based feedstock is finite and increasingly contested across industries, which can create pricing volatility and availability constraints.
2) Chemical Recycling (growing, not uniform)
Chemical recycling breaks PET down into monomers or intermediates and then rebuilds it into PET again. The main benefit is flexibility: it can be better suited to mixed, colored, or lower-quality feedstocks and can, in some cases, deliver “like-virgin” performance.
Implications, risks, and limitations
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“Chemical recycling” is an umbrella term. Different processes have different yields, costs, and maturity. Not all are proven at reliable commercial scale.
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Some pathways can be energy-heavy or require significant chemical inputs, which can weaken the climate advantage depending on local energy mix and system boundaries.
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Chemical recycling is often more expensive today, with more limited supplier options and longer ramp timelines.
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Some supply chains rely on mass-balance or mixed-input systems. Without strong documentation, this can create real greenwashing exposure.
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Handling solvents/chemicals and managing byproducts adds compliance burden and can limit where production is feasible.
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Textile-to-textile is promising, but collection, sorting, and preprocessing infrastructure is still developing, which keeps volumes small and variability higher.
Recycled Polyester vs Virgin Polyester: Impact in Numbers
Spinning recycled plastic into post-consumer recycled polyester.
Textile Exchange’s 2025 Recycled Polyester Challenge, developed with UN Climate Change, is built on the premise: recycled polyester has a significantly lower carbon footprint than virgin polyester.
Pulling together LCAs referenced by Textile Exchange and industry studies, a realistic picture of virgin polyester environmental impact vs recycled looks like this :
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Climate (GHG emissions): Recycled polyester often shows around 30–50% lower greenhouse gas emissions per kg than virgin PET, depending on boundaries and assumptions.
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RPET typically uses less total energy than virgin production because it skips extraction and primary polymerisation.
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Polyester doesn’t use water as much as irrigated cotton, but RPET can cut water usage compared with virgin in some stages. The larger win is avoiding new fossil extraction.
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RPET can divert PET bottles from landfill or incineration, which is why policy and NGOs have historically supported bottle-to-bottle and bottle-to-fibre loops. But as Textile Exchange notes, less than 1% of global fibre volume currently comes from recycled textiles, so most “recycled” polyester is still downcycling bottles, not closing the loop on garments.
If you visualise RPET vs PET in a simple bar chart you understand that recycled polyester is measurably better than virgin polyester on climate and upstream resource extraction. But it’s not a 90% reduction or a miracle.
Recycled Polyester Impact: What RPET Still Doesn’t Solve
Even in a best-case scenario, switching to recycled polyester won’t solve the entire problem. As both (RPET and PET) still release microfibres during washing and wear. And at end-of-life, polyester garments, recycled or not, remain notoriously hard to recycle again, especially in blends and multi-material products that dominate collections.
Textile Exchange reinforces that material substitution on its own isn’t enough if overall fibre volumes keep rising, especially virgin fossil-based synthetics.
Recycled Polyester Availability and Supplier Readiness for Fashion Brands
Once you accept that RPET is a targeted optimization, the next problem is: “Is recycled polyester really available where you need it?”
Where recycled polyester is ready:
You’ll find certified recycled polyester suppliers with mature offers in:
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Activewear and performance knits;
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Fleece and brushed knits;
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Woven and knit linings;
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Puffer fillings and insulation;
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Many outerwear and casual basics fabrics.
In these categories, mills in key sourcing hubs such as Turkey, Portugal, Italy, China and others are generally well prepared. Many run virgin and recycled lines in parallel, have hands-on experience with RCS and GRS audits, and are able to quote RPET options with clear recycled content percentages and up-to-date certification references.
For brands, that means recycled polyester can often be specified and sourced with similar ease to conventional PET, as long as they are working with the right suppliers.
From a day-to-day sourcing perspective, recycled polyester is still emerging, but in many well tested categories it already behaves a lot like virgin polyester. The main difference is in a cost level: certified RPET typically carries a single to low double-digit over PET. For teams on tight margins this is significant; for brands with stronger pricing power or explicit climate targets, it is usually manageable once it’s spread across the total garment cost.
How to Verify Recycled Polyester: RCS, GRS and Traceable Chain-of-Custody
Sneaker made by Saola brand using recycled polyester - Source: Saola
How to verify recycled polyester is one of the hardest, and most important, parts of working with RPET. This is where Textile Exchange’s standards come in hand.
At the core is the Content Claim Standard (CCS), which sets the chain-of-custody rules that all other standards build on. The Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) uses that backbone to confirm that a product contains recycled content (from 5%) and that this content is tracked correctly through the supply chain. The Global Recycled Standard (GRS) goes further, adding minimum recycled content thresholds (20–50% depending on the claim) along with social, environmental and chemical requirements for processing.
Together, they give brands and suppliers a shared and trusted language for traceability for recycled materials, but you still need a clear process to apply them.
You can follow these steps to manage your RPET verification:
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Request Documentation from every supplier offering recycled polyester, ask for valid RCS/GRS Scope Certificates for each facility involved, plus example Transaction Certificates for similar products
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Receive TCs, check that they clearly state the buyer and seller, the product description and composition including its recycled percentage and whether it is post- or pre-consumer, the quantity, the standard used (RCS or GRS) and the certification body.
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Certificates should not be scattered around. A sourcing-ready digital platform keeps Scope and Transaction Certificates in one place, links them to specific fabrics, styles and seasons, makes them searchable by supplier, article, collection and standard, and keeps them accessible for audits, regulations and impact reporting. World Collective is built around this exact workflow: suppliers upload their certifications, products are tied to those documents, and brands can save materials with all corresponding proof attached.
Turning Data into a Traceable Sourcing Strategy
Recycled polyester delivers real but bounded gains, lower climate and resource impacts than virgin PET, especially when mechanically recycled from bottles, but it doesn’t solve microfibres, feedstock limits or end-of-life on its own.
If your brand plans to lean on RPET in a serious way, you need three things in place: clear impact expectations, supplier partners who are genuinely ready and a system to verify and store evidence.
If you want to go deeper into the standards and documentation that sit behind recycled claims, read our article “Textile Certifications Explained: Why GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS and GRS Matter for Fashion Brands Now” and link it back to this guide.
