The world generates up to 92 million tonnes of textile waste each year, yet less than 1% of it is actually recycled. Faced with this figure, chemical engineer Aida Rafat chose to tackle the problem with solvent technology: her company, DyeRecycle, is trying to decolorize and decontaminate post-consumer textile waste and feed it back into the polyester and textile production chain.

Rafat's entry point came from an industry pain point: polyester textile waste comes in every conceivable color, white material is easy to recycle while colored material is hard to process, and sorting is costly and energy-intensive. While pursuing her PhD at Imperial College London under Professor Jason Hallett, a professor of sustainable chemical technology, she researched developing chemicals from waste streams, and on that basis launched a side project — using a solvent method to strip color and impurities from waste polyester and produce white textile waste that can be fed back into the process. The feedstock she first used for experiments came from old fabrics she picked up in charity shops, including a framed Santa Claus blanket that still hangs on her office wall.

After completing her PhD in 2023, Rafat formally co-founded DyeRecycle. She admits that the hardest part of entrepreneurship is finding, with limited time and money, the highest-value commercial application for a technology platform that "can do a lot of things." The company therefore currently focuses on polyester and polycotton — the largest fiber category in textile waste — even though its technology could in theory also handle nylon and acrylic. She stresses that the solvent used in the process can be recovered almost quantitatively, which constitutes a cost advantage, because circularity directly affects operating costs and capital expenditure.

The fragmentation of the supply chain is another hurdle. Rafat describes the fashion and textile supply chain as extremely opaque: many brands cannot even reach their own suppliers, let alone their suppliers' upstream. DyeRecycle's direct customers are polyester producers, while brands are the end users of its technology, with roughly five tiers separating the two, so the company has to engage both manufacturers and brands at the same time.

Over the past few years, the company has earned several recognitions: in 2024 it won the IChemE Global Sustainability Award and was shortlisted for the Manufacturing Futures — Fashion District innovation challenge. Earlier this year, DyeRecycle appeared at London Fashion Week in collaboration with designer Patrick McDowell, dyeing a runway gown with red pigment made from recycled textile waste. For Rafat, this kind of exposure is crucial to communicating the technical maturity of circular processes.

Next, DyeRecycle plans to deploy its first pilot-scale facility in the near term and hopes to send tonne-scale samples to customers to demonstrate the technology's range of applicability. Rafat says this leap requires investment and support, and she is ready for it. She quotes someone else's words to spur herself on: "If the CEO role hasn't changed every six months, you're not moving fast enough." In her view, a technical CEO with a chemical engineering background can understand the challenges, the language, and the complexity of the skills the team needs — an advantage that keeps the company moving forward.

Source: Taking fashion full circle · Originally published 2026-09-28