More than 10 billion new garments are produced globally each year, while about 92 million tons of old clothes end up in landfills, with less than 20% being reused or recycled. Resource circulation and green manufacturing around textile waste are becoming issues directly tied to the "dual carbon" goals.

Policy support has set a timetable for this track. On April 11, 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Recycling of Waste Textiles," proposing to initially establish a waste textile recycling system by 2025, with a recycling rate of 25% and recycled fiber output of 2 million tons; by 2030, the recycling rate should rise to 30% and recycled fiber output to 3 million tons.

Founded in 2023, Anhui Xindengli Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. has chosen what the industry considers the most difficult technical route—T2T (Textile-to-Textile) chemical recycling. In two years, the company has built a 100,000-ton T2T chemical recycling system. Through molecular-level cracking and high-purity repolymerization, it converts waste polyester textiles into recycled PET chips and yarns that can directly replace virgin materials, achieving large-scale mass production. According to the company, the performance of the recycled materials produced by this technology is close to virgin levels.

Its plant in Jinzhai County, Lu'an, Anhui, receives raw materials from old clothes and textile scraps collected at various purchasing points. Workers first manually dismantle them, then send them to a crusher for shredding, and then into a agglomeration machine at 270 degrees Celsius to melt into black and white pellets. To ensure product quality, semi-finished products undergo multi-stage filtration. The filtration system handles impurities with a precision of 15 microns, capable of filtering out inorganic particles and metal impurities about one-sixth the diameter of a human hair.

The business started overseas. Ye Xiaozhe, one of the founders and current general manager of Xindengli, was born in 1992 and was originally groomed to take over the family steel business. While completing transactions in Spain and following up on orders in Algeria, he noticed that local waste processing stations were piled with large amounts of old clothes, including many big brands. A few were picked out, but most were simply burned. He also saw European recycling companies coming to buy these old clothes, and after chatting, learned that they could "transform" old clothes through technology. After returning to China, he found that the country generates more than 20 million tons of waste textiles each year, with a recycling rate of less than 15%, so he decided to enter the field.

By the end of 2024, Xindengli had its first fiber production line with an annual output of 30,000 tons. The company estimates that by 2026 it can achieve a shipment target of 110,000 tons per year. Currently, Ye Xiaozhe is promoting T2T chemical recycling technology to mainstream European markets and cooperating with teams from international first-tier brands. According to him, the company's goal is to become a globally leading provider of high-value recycling solutions for waste textiles.

The environmental account is also given important weight. Chemical fiber raw materials mostly come from petroleum and natural gas. Burning large amounts of chemical fiber clothing wastes resources and generates emissions. According to data provided by the company, its T2T chemical recycling technology has carbon emissions two-thirds lower than traditional processes. One of Ye Xiaozhe's entrepreneurial motivations was the European Commission's "EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles" released on March 30, 2022—based on the "polluter pays" principle, it requires producers to take responsibility for the entire life cycle of products placed on the market and restricts arbitrary claims such as "green" and "eco-friendly."

To this end, Xindengli has established an integrated demonstration chain of "old clothes recycling—recycled raw materials—green products" in Jinzhai, introduced RCS Global Recycled Standard certification, and established a carbon footprint traceability system with LCA product life cycle certification, creating traceable digital files for each batch of recycled chips and yarns. The company has launched front-end cooperation pilots with several international brands, participated in the construction of green textile industry platforms in the EU and Southeast Asia, and become one of the few domestic chemical recycling companies for old clothes with export capabilities. In terms of energy use, the plant has built a 1.2MW rooftop photovoltaic power station and a biomass gasification furnace system. The second phase has a total annual capacity exceeding 80,000 tons, which can meet about 60% of daily production energy demand. The next stage aims to achieve 100% green electricity supply.

Source: Xindengli: Cracking the Code of Old Clothes Rebirth_Tencent News · Originally published on 2025-08-12