A new study published in Nature Scientific Reports (2025) marks a leap forward for the global effort to tackle fashion’s textile waste crisis with the help of enzymatic recycling, a biological solution now poised to significantly improve circularity in the fashion industry.
The research, authored by an international team of chemists and bioprocess engineers, explores how specially engineered enzymes can selectively break down the most challenging blends of cotton and polyester, making true fiber-to-fiber textile recycling far more practical and scalable.
The Challenge: Blended Fabrics and Fashion’s Waste Problem
The world faces a tidal wave of textile waste, with only about 1% of post-consumer clothing currently recycled back into new garments. Mixed-fiber blends, such as the common cotton-polyester combinations in t-shirts and activewear, are especially problematic—traditional methods can’t easily separate and regenerate these fibers. Most recycling today is downcycling, turning old clothes into insulation or rags, not new clothes.
The new Nature study highlights: Current mechanical, chemical, thermochemical, and enzymatic strategies suffer from several limitations, such as high energy costs, extensive pre-treatment requirements, and enzyme instability. This leaves most blended garment waste destined for landfill or incineration.
Enzyme Tech: From Lab to Circular Fashion
The innovation at the heart of the study is a Spore Surface Display (SSD) strategy, where target enzymes are anchored to robust bacterial spores. This enables the simultaneous and targeted breakdown of cotton (cellulose) and polyester (PET) directly from mixed waste fabrics, separating the components into high-quality monomers—the molecular “building blocks” for new fibers. Unlike mechanical recycling, which degrades fiber strength, the enzymatic method recycles textiles back to virgin quality, allowing polyester to be continuously re-spun into new clothes without performance loss.
Real-World Promise and Case Studies
Recent successful trials, not only in academic labs but in commercial partnerships, have shown that enzyme-based textile recycling can work at scale. In 2024, a European group produced a polyester shirt entirely from enzymatically recycled textile fibers—no virgin plastic, no bottle waste, just true circular fashion.
A 2025 NREL study found that enzyme-based PET recycling can cut environmental impacts by up to 95% compared to traditional methods, while boosting socioeconomic benefits by 45% through energy savings and virtually eliminating the need for new petroleum-derived plastics.
Some startups, such as Huminly and others, are using similar enzyme tech to convert fast-fashion waste into new, high-quality fibers, joining the push towards a fiber-to-fiber future.
Obstacles and the Road Ahead
While the promise is enormous, several challenges remain. Enzyme extraction still requires some pre-treatment, and engineering enzymes for stability, low-cost production, and upscaling is an ongoing task. Still, the Nature study’s insights—especially the ability to immobilize multiple enzymes simultaneously and selectively—represent a breakthrough for recycling even complex blends, which are rapidly rising in global fiber consumption.
The study concludes: To facilitate the up-scaling of this technology in case of successful advances in SSD, an appropriate process design has been proposed. This approach contributes to a circular textile industry by recycling textile waste and reintroducing it into the production cycle.
Why This Matters: The Circular Fashion Revolution
Enzymatic recycling could dramatically increase the recycling rate of global textiles, cutting into a waste stream expected to exceed 3400 million tons by 2030 if nothing changes. Unlike “bottle-to-fiber” recycling, which doesn’t address actual clothing waste, enzyme-driven schemes promise the long-sought-after fiber-to-fiber solution at a commercial scale.
As one scientist summarized, Enzyme-enabled recycling establishes ‘technology for a circular economy’ of PET plastics. For fashion, it’s a plausible path to break out of the take-make-waste model. Instead of polyester garments being a dead-end product, they become feedstock for tomorrow’s textiles.
Final Thoughts
The advance described in the Nature study isn’t just another recycling method—it’s a genuine leap toward a future where fashion waste recirculates endlessly as valued raw material. As enzymatic technology matures, the industry edges closer to solving its most intractable waste problem—unlocking a regenerative, circular system for textile production and consumption.
