Recycled yarn is becoming a core business, not a “green” sideline. Unifi’s new targets show confidence—but also invite tougher questions about scale, traceability and genuine circularity.
Unifi, the maker of REPREVE, has published its FY2025 Sustainability Snapshot with a familiar message—“Waste Nothing”—and a sharper set of numbers. It says it has now transformed the equivalent of 1 billion polyester T-shirts’ worth of textile and yarn waste through the REPREVE platform, and it has added a new ambition: recycle 65 billion plastic bottles by FY2030.
The company positions REPREVE as a growth engine: 31% of FY2025 revenue came from the brand, with a goal of over 50% by FY2030. It also reports 46 billion bottles diverted to date and zero noncompliant water discharges.
These targets reflect a broader shift: recycled synthetics are moving from niche “capsule” inputs to industrial defaults, driven by brand commitments and looming regulation. But the bigger the volumes, the less forgiving the debate becomes—especially over whether bottle-to-fibre recycling competes with closed-loop bottle recycling, and whether textile-to-textile pathways can scale fast enough to matter.
Unifi’s strategy is to widen circular feedstocks (including textile waste programmes) while proving performance at scale. The commercial prize is obvious: if REPREVE passes from procurement preference to specification standard, Unifi becomes embedded in supply chains. The reputational risk is equally clear: the market will increasingly demand audited claims, not slogans.
