Recycled cotton made up just 1 percent of total cotton produced in 2025, even as cotton itself accounted for 19 percent of global fiber production, according to Textile Exchange figures cited by Fashion for Good. The Amsterdam-based nonprofit is now targeting that gap with its newly launched Cotton Reloop Matrix project, which will benchmark mechanically recycled cotton against real brand specifications and build standard operating procedures for spinning and processing the fiber.

The supply-side constraint is not capacity. Fashion for Good says mechanical cotton recyclers currently have unused capacity. What holds adoption back sits on the buyer side: inconsistent fiber quality, shorter fiber lengths and price premiums. These are Tier 2 and Tier 3 sourcing decisions — yarn spinners and fabric mills decide blend percentages, and brands decide what quality benchmarks recycled cotton must clear.

What does the project actually do?

The project will first gather data on the mechanically recycled cotton accessible today and compare it against brands' specifications for knit and woven apparel. Trials with recyclers and mills will feed a standard operating procedure for spinning and processing recycled fibers. A Quality Matrix will identify recycled cotton that meets commercial requirements and pinpoint where quality needs improvement. Alongside recyclers, partners will create 10 demonstrator fabrics and run five quality enhancement trials at the mill level. The output includes a Trade-off Analysis plotting how recycled content, price and quality intersect.

Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good, framed the problem as an evidence gap rather than a technology gap. "Recycled cotton has been talked about as a scale-ready solution for years, but the industry has been working from fragmented data and siloed testing," she said. "By plotting real recycler capabilities against real brand quality targets, and by co-developing the operational standards to support them, we can move recycled cotton from a case-by-case experiment to a category the industry can actually plan around."

Why does fiber quality cap blend percentages?

Mechanical recycling imposes hard physical limits. Shredding shortens and weakens fibers relative to virgin cotton, and only around half of processed material meets the parameters needed for new products. Fashion for Good also notes that brands often benchmark recycled cotton against 100 percent virgin cotton — a comparison the recycled fiber cannot win. The project aims to replace that with objective, standard quality benchmarks for recycled cotton specifically.

Reformulation of the benchmark matters for buyers. Nikki Player, senior director of raw materials at Reformation, said the brand has worked with recycled cotton for years but hit a ceiling: "What's been limiting is the ability to scale to higher blend percentages without compromising fabric quality or hand feel. What this project offers is a shared reference point where brands and recyclers work from the same evidence."

Who is in the partner lineup?

The partner structure spans the supply chain:

• Innovation partners: retailers C&A, Bestseller and Reformation, plus vertical manufacturer Interloop
• Advisory partners: manufacturers Arvind Limited and Shahi Exports
• Ecosystem partner: Uster Technologies, a machinery firm focused on fiber quality technologies

At project close, Fashion for Good will publish a Roadmap for Cotton Circularity report laying out the data requirements to scale recycled cotton across different product verticals and regions. The initiative follows the nonprofit's Circular Fiber Collective, focused on textile-to-textile recycling, and its textile waste mapping work.

Interloop deepens its position

Separately, Interloop — which produces hosiery, knitwear, activewear and denim — has become a Fashion for Good Innovation Partner, gaining a seat on the organization's Innovation Committee. The arrangement gives the manufacturer access to technology testing and collaboration opportunities alongside existing Innovation Partners including Adidas, Birla Cellulose, Levi Strauss & Co., PDS Limited and PVH Corp. Interloop has already invested in its banana leaf-based fiber and its Looptrace traceability platform for end-to-end cotton tracking.

Faryal Sadiq, chief marketing officer at Interloop, said: "The industry has no shortage of promising ideas; the opportunity lies in turning more of them into solutions that can work at scale. Through this partnership, we want to bring our manufacturing experience into that process."

For sourcing teams, the project's value is concrete: within its timeline, buyers should gain published quality benchmarks and a trade-off analysis that let them specify higher recycled cotton blends against mill-verified data — rather than negotiating every recycled content claim fiber lot by fiber lot.