Fashion for Good’s “Stretching Circularity” tries to make the 1–5% everyone ignores finally recyclable.
Most garments are not “non-circular” because brands lack ambition; they are non-circular because a small amount of stretch fibre can ruin a recycling batch. Stretching Circularity, a new initiative led by Amsterdam-based Fashion for Good, targets elastane—the ubiquitous comfort additive that turns fibre-to-fibre recycling into a chemistry problem.
The consortium—Levi Strauss & Co., On, Paradise Textiles, Positive Materials and Reformation, with Ralph Lauren advising and Materiom plus the Ellen MacArthur Foundation supporting—will generate comparative, pilot-scale data on lower-impact elastane options.
Two workstreams do the work: (1) testing next-generation elastanes from alternative inputs (including bio-based), and (2) testing regenerated elastane from emerging recycling routes.
To force real-world validation, the project will build demonstrator garments: a technical T-shirt with 10% elastane and a non-technical T-shirt with 2%.
Elastane appears in roughly 80% of comfort clothing, often at low percentages that are invisible to consumers but devastating to recyclers. It behaves as a “contaminant” in feedstocks, blocking high-volume recycling of cotton and polyester blends and pushing the system toward downcycling or landfill.
This is a de-risking play. Brands say alternatives exist, but lack the pilot-scale evidence needed to scale without performance failures or cost shocks. If the project produces credible benchmarks on performance and recyclability, elastane could shift from circularity blocker to manageable component—unlocking recycling for the bulk of everyday clothing.
