On the floor of a building in the English industrial town of Kettering, an hour north of London by train, a pile of colorful football jerseys waits, but not for long.
Soon, the garments will be fed into a gleaming silver behemoth: a series of machines that will shred, melt and purify polyester fibers, then extrude them into thousands of tiny, uniform plastic beads ready to be shipped to a spinning mill. There, they will be melted down again and drawn into pristine new yarn for the next generation of team kits.
This is Project Re:claim, the United Kingdom’s first—and so far only—commercial-scale textile-to-textile polyester recycling plant. A partnership between Plan B Circular and the Salvation Army Trading Company, the 35,000-square-foot operation can produce roughly 3,000 tons of lentil-sized pellets a year from predominantly polyester-rich pre- and post-consumer waste: sportswear, certainly, but also uniforms, workwear, duvets, dressing gowns and promotional scrim.
By diverting these items from landfills and incineration, Project Re:claim aims to establish a closed-loop system that keeps synthetic materials in circulation and reduces the industry’s reliance on fossil fuels, all while consuming up to 90 percent less energy than virgin polyester production. It’s a tall ambition, but one now bolstered by Global Recycled Standard certification, which it says will add credibility to its customers’ recycled content claims at a time when watchdog groups are sharpening their scrutiny.
“In the U.K. alone, 300,000 tons of textile items are discarded into household waste, including polyester,” said Tim Cross, CEO of Plan B Circular. “Up until now, polyester that had no useful life left would have been disposed of. With this project, we can now save that waste and return it to supply chains. It’s a carbon-saving, planet-saving solution.”
Launched in 2024 with a setup adapted from PET bottle recycling, Project Re:claim arrived just as bottle-to-clothing recycling is on the way out. Upcoming European Union legislation is expected to prioritize textile-to-textile recycling, reserving bottles for closed-loop food-grade packaging. Though conceived as a five-year initiative, it’s already ready to scale further, whether by adding a second line or running additional shifts.
“This is a game changer for the industry,” said Charlene Bent, marketing manager for the Salvation Army Trading Company. “A lot of organizations are working on plans, but this is something that’s actually in motion.”
Grist for the machinery comes from Salvation Army Trading Company’s purpose-built processing center in Kettering Business Park, where Fibersort, the United Kingdom’s only automated textile-sorting line, can classify up to 20 tons an hour of donated clothing and textiles by fiber type and color. Trim-cleaning machines can also be used to remove zippers, buttons and labels, but the process still tends to be highly manual and time-consuming.
“So we run duvets through—we know they’re 100 percent polyester,” said George Barnett, general manager for Project Re:claim, noting that natural fibers such as wool or cotton won’t melt but instead turn to ash, making them better suited to other recycling routes. “We do the same with dressing gowns, blankets, snuggies and similar items. A garment might have an elasticated cuff that’s easy enough to cut off, but if you’re trying to process endless garments—shirts, trousers, workwear, everything—that’s just too much unless they’re designed to be recycled.”
That’s why Project Re:claim has been working with the Circular Textiles Foundation to help the likes of Beeswift, DHL, Regatta and the Metropolitan Police design corporate garments with end-of-life recycling in mind. Each item features a QR code that explains how to return worn-out gear while helping identify and track it through the recycling process.
Even so, every load that goes into the system requires the machines to be adjusted for filtration, speed, pressure and temperature, minimizing fluctuations that could produce misshapen pellets or, worse, clogs that shut everything down. As a result, Project Re:claim prefers to work with pre-consumer—or post-industrial—materials, since there are fewer variables to manage, such as the type of washing detergent used. To bridge that gap, Barnett has been trialing blends of pre- and post-consumer textiles to gradually introduce trickier feedstocks into the process.
“We’ve been running for two-and-a-half years, and there’s still a lot of R&D happening,” he said. “There probably will be for another two-and-a-half years, but ultimately we’re on a journey to providing this solution for the fashion industry.”
