Municipal waste accelerates Polyester Recycling
Europe’s efforts to collect post-consumer textiles are picking up speed, driven by new EU regulations and climate ambitions. Yet, a bottleneck for textile sorting is forming just as volumes surge. Despite these challenges, a new solution is emerging, one that taps into existing municipal solid waste (MSW) streams and makes it possible to scale up polyester recycling much faster
Over the past year, requirements for the separate collection of post-consumer textiles have started to reshape waste management across the continent. Initial progress is undeniable, but as more textiles are collected, the limits of today’s sorting and recycling systems grow ever more apparent. Building large-scale textile sorting capacity has proven extremely difficult, and today such infrastructure simply does not exist in most European markets. As a result, many recycling companies are forced to postpone investment plans, since a steady flow of suitable feedstock is not yet available, even though the volume of collected textiles continues to grow.
When Progress Stalls, Opportunity Rises
This gap between regulation and on-the-ground capacity risks creating a backlog and potentially undermining public trust in the circular transition. But where dedicated textile sorting is struggling to deliver, Europe’s expansion of post-sorting of municipal solid waste (MSW) offers a compelling shortcut.
─ That’s why our solution, which uses polyester-rich waste from post-sorting of household waste, is such a strong opportunity. It’s a practical and scalable way to boost polyester recycling, without waiting for new collection systems to be built, says Niklas Jakobsson, co-founder of Rewin.
Instead of waiting for years for large-scale systems for post-consumer textiles to be built, we can already recover significant volumes of polyester from existing household waste streams. Modern MSW post-sorting facilities are able to extract a polyester-rich fraction without requiring changes in consumer behavior, new collection routes, or complex logistics, cutting straight to the heart of circularity at scale.
From Challenging Streams to Circular Solutions
However, these recovered polyester fractions are highly contaminated and intermixed with other materials, making them exceptionally difficult for conventional recycling technologies. Until now, this meant most of these resources went straight to incineration, representing a lost opportunity both for resource recovery and emissions reduction.
This is precisely where Rewin’s recycling technology takes center stage. Unlike existing solutions, Rewin’s process is capable of recycling even the most challenging polyester from MSW, converting it into high-purity BHET, a polymer-grade monomer essential for manufacturing new polyester. Recent collaborations with world-leading polyester producers have shown that Rewin’s BHET not only meets, but exceeds, the stringent requirements for a reliable, fossil-free feedstock.
From MSW to New Products: Closing the Loop
So, what happens to the material created from MSW? The BHET monomer produced from recycled polyester provides a direct substitute for virgin, fossil-based raw materials at the very start of the polyester value chain. It is used to manufacture new polyester and PET for a wide range of high-value household applications, such as textiles, packaging and technical applications such as automotive interiors and reinforcement of tires. In other words, polyester extracted from household waste gets a second life, re-entering the market as the building block for tomorrow’s products. With each production cycle, the environmental benefits multiply as carbon emissions shrink and reliance on fossil resources diminishes.
─ With our recycling technology, we can recover the tough polyester from household waste and turn it into high-quality BHET suitable for polyester producers instead of fossil feedstock. This doesn’t just cut carbon emissions significantly. It also offers waste managers a profitable and scalable business opportunity, a truly climate-smart alternative to current solutions, explains Niklas Jakobsson.
A Climate Solution with Profit and Scale
By diverting polyester away from incineration and back into the value chain, this approach not only reduces CO2 emissions dramatically but also offers waste operators a profitable and scalable alternative to carbon capture and storage (CCS). Rewin’s solution turns an urgent waste management problem into a financially attractive, environmentally superior business model.
Today, as Europe faces the twin challenges of scaling circularity and cutting carbon, integrating MSW post-sorting and advanced polyester recycling offers a powerful path forward. It’s a new chapter for European waste management, where even our hardest-to-recycle materials become engines of innovation, sustainability, and a circular economy.