Selected will put its first Circ lyocell garments into European stores and online channels from October 2026, using a fibre that carries 30% pulp recovered from cotton-polyester textile waste.

The retailer will roll out a limited-edition women's shirt and trousers cut from 100% lyocell — not 100% recycled content — a distinction sourcing managers should note before citing closed-loop credentials on any line sheet.

Birla Cellulose produced the fibre after a year of supply chain collaboration with Arvind, which manufactured the fabric in India. Circ's separation technology isolates the cotton fraction from polyester in blended scrap, then feeds that cellulose into a lyocell process without burning or re-polymerising the polyester component.

"There's still a long way to go when it comes to scaling new fibre technologies," said Louise Lund, Selected's sustainability and sourcing manager, in the brand's announcement.

What does the 30% figure actually mean?

The garments cannot be called 100% recycled because Circ's process recovers only the cotton portion of the blended waste, then blends it with conventional wood pulp to make lyocell (a regenerated cellulose fibre spun from wood-derived cellulose dissolved in a closed-loop solvent system). The remaining 70% of the feedstock is virgin wood pulp.

Sourcing teams benchmarking the launch should read the spec sheet, not the press headline. A garment labelled "lyocell with 30% recycled content" reflects the upstream limit of separation technology, not a marketing hedge.

Who built the chain?

• Birla Cellulose — dissolving pulp to lyocell fibre, India
• Arvind — fabric weaving, India
• Selected — cut, sew and retail, Europe

The India-to-Europe line is now standard for next-generation cellulosics, since a handful of Asian producers hold most lyocell-grade dissolving pulp capacity worldwide.

Why does this go beyond a single drop?

Circ is selling the launch as proof of its Fiber Club initiative — a pooled-demand scheme where multiple brands commit volume to share the minimum-order risk on limited recycled-fibre runs. For sourcing managers, the structural pitch is simple: shared offtake cuts per-brand MOQ (minimum order quantity), the perennial blocker for recycled-input pilots in cellulosics.

Lund's framing — "still a long way to go" on scaling — telegraphs what the buyer side already knows: recycled-content lyocell remains a constrained-supply material, with allocation rather than spot pricing the norm.

What does the source-check need to cover?

The 30% pulp claim sits under no specific textile regulation today. Future EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) delegated acts on textile fibre recycling remain in draft. Brands piloting these fibres now will need a mass-balance chain of custody (a documented accounting trail that tracks recycled input across co-processed production batches) from sorted textile waste through dissolving pulp to finished yarn once those rules land.

The sourcing decision forced by this news: any brand piloting Circ or comparable separation-tech fibres in 2025-26 must publish the recovered-input percentage alongside the lyocell claim, or risk reading as greenwashing (falsely inflating environmental claims) once regulatory acts start naming fibre categories by recycled share.