Science

New Recyclable Yarn Could Transform the Future of Fashion

Good News Post

Jul 28, 2026 — 2 min read

Not actual yarn, image for illustrative purposes - credit Eva Bronzini via pexels

By Science Correspondent

Scientists develop stretchy fibre that can be turned back into new clothing again and again.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new type of recyclable yarn that could help reduce the millions of tonnes of clothing sent to landfill every year.

The lightweight, stretchy yarn is made from polyethylene – a plastic commonly used in milk bottles and shopping bags – and can be woven into clothing before being melted down and spun into new yarn at the end of its life.

Researchers successfully recycled the material 10 times, finding it remained just as strong and flexible as conventional sewing thread.

*A comparison shows that, like typical commercial fibers, the new yarn is just as stretchy.* *Credit: Courtesy of the researchers*

The breakthrough could provide an alternative to traditional spandex-blend fabrics, which are difficult to recycle because they combine different materials that cannot easily be separated.

Svetlana Boriskina, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, said:

"Eighty per cent of textiles on the U.S. market currently contain some amount of spandex, which makes them non-recyclable. There's no widely adopted technology that recycles textiles into textiles. With our new yarn, we hope to change that."

“There’s no widely-adopted technology now that recycles textiles into textiles. With our new yarn, we hope to change that,” says Svetlana Boriskina. These two SEM images compare a conventional elastic yarn made of PET-spandex (left) with a new type of recyclable made from two types of recyclable polyethylene. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

The researchers believe garments made from the new yarn could eventually be recycled into fresh clothing or transformed into products such as buttons and belt buckles, helping create a more sustainable, circular fashion industry.

The study, led by first author SeongHyeon Kim, has been published in ACS Materials Letters. Other authors include Duo Xu, Volodymyr Korolovych, Domingo Flores-Hernandez, Kaniz Moriam and Daniel Braconnier.

The research was supported in part by the DEVCOM Soldier Center through the U.S. Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research Global via Tecnológico de Monterrey, and the MIT Portugal Program.

Read paper here

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