This innovative polyester recycling process accepts a wider range of materials, including both pre- and post-consumer polyester feedstock, such as textile waste and PET bottles. This offers greater flexibility in sourcing for feedstock, and as a result, improved cost efficiency compared to the recycled polyester options currently used in SHEIN's products. Testing by Donghua's team of researchers has also shown that the recycled polyester fabrics produced through this process can be recycled repeatedly without significant impact on the material properties of the resulting fabric, as the inputs are chemically broken down, refined, and reconstituted at the polymer level.
At this stage of the project, SHEIN will be partnering with selected partner fibre manufacturers, to scale up the technology from a laboratory-scale setting to a facility capable of producing recycled polyester fibres at a larger commercial scale. The facility is expected to start large-scale production of polyester fibres in June 2025, with an annual target production output of 3,000 metric tons.
