Every year, the Netherlands discards approximately 215,000 tonnes of post-consumer textiles, roughly 12 kilograms per person. Poor recyclability sends half to incineration. This waste stream containing contaminated materials, blended synthetic-natural fabrics, and mixed colors, defies conventional sorting and leaves municipalities with one path forward: burn it for energy recovery.
Circle Economy’s pilot proves a radically different approach is possible. By linking nature-inspired biological and thermochemical processes into an integrated system, the Netherlands is transforming what the recycling industry calls “impossible” waste into valuable feedstocks for new industries. This addresses a critical gap of the textiles that current systems cannot handle.
Learning from Nature’s Decomposition Cascades
The Netherlands pilot of our Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation initiative, led by Circle Economy (and in partnership with BioFashionTech, EV Biotech, TNO, and Erdotex), proves that even the most “unrecyclable” textile waste can become valuable with the right mindset.
The breakthrough isn’t a single technology. It’s how three complementary pathways work together, mimicking nature’s decomposition cascades. In forests, fungi break down cellulose while bacteria metabolize sugars and microbes transform residues into nutrients. Nothing is wasted, everything cycles continuously. The Netherlands pilot applies this same logic to textiles: enzymatic hydrolysis, bacterial fermentation, and thermochemical gasification working in concert to extract value from complex waste.
Industrial Symbiosis: The Core Innovation
This integrated approach supports these three pathways working as one ecosystem. Starting with mixed, low-value textile waste collected through municipal networks and provided by Erdotex, the system routes materials through three complementary pathways:
Enzymatic Hydrolysis (BioFashionTech) uses custom enzymes to break down cellulosic fibers—cotton, viscose, linen—into glucose. Unlike harsh chemical recycling, this process is low-temperature, selective, and cleans. It handles contaminated, blended, and colored textiles without extensive sorting. The discovery: textile-derived glucose often outperformed commercial glucose in downstream applications.
Bacterial Fermentation (EV Biotech) converts that glucose into PHA bioplastics, fully biodegradable polymers for packaging, agriculture, and medical devices. This creates a direct loop from fashion waste to new materials without fossil fuels.
Thermochemical Gasification (TNO) transforms what’s left—polyester, nylon, residual fibers—into syngas, a chemical feedstock for industrial production. Conversion rates exceeded 70%, and critically, pre-treating textiles through enzymatic hydrolysis made the gas cleaner and more commercially valuable.
Why Integration Changes Everything
The revolution isn’t in any single process. It’s in their synergy. These pathways don’t just coexist, they enhance each other’s performance. Enzymatic pre-treatment improves gasification efficiency. Outputs of these processes become unexpected inputs for multiple industries and create new circular material flows. Just as earthworms, fungi, and bacteria collaborate to decompose cellulose in soil, these technologies work synergistically to transform what conventional systems cannot handle. This complementarity creates a system more resilient and valuable than isolated technologies could achieve.
This is industrial symbiosis inspired by nature.
Closing the Gap Between Ambition and Reality
The Netherlands has set an ambitious Extended Producer Responsibility target: 75% of textiles collected for reuse or recycling by 2030. But as of early 2025, the country has collected just 0.3% under these mandates1.
The Circle Economy pilot directly addresses this gap by proving that contaminated, blended, low-value materials destined for incineration can become economically viable resources. The environmental impact is significant: redirecting even a portion of the currently incinerated to regenerative material cycles reduces fossil dependency and greenhouse gas emissions while creating new circular flows and supporting regional circular economies.
What the Pilot Proved
The pilot successfully demonstrated proof-of-concept across all three pathways. Key findings include:
- Textile-derived glucose performs well (and sometimes better than) commercial glucose in fermentation
- 70%+ conversion rates in gasification, with significant quality improvements through pre-treatment
- System modularity allows operators to adapt to different waste compositions and market demands
- Pathways enhance each other’s performance when integrated
Challenges remain: glucose conversion efficiency needs optimization, PHA yields require refinement through microbial strain development, and higher-value gas products (methane, methanol) must replace generic syngas. Most critically, early collaboration with end-users is essential to ensure outputs meet actual market needs.
Most critically, the pilot revealed a systems-level insight: complementarity matters more than perfection. Pre-treating textiles through enzymatic hydrolysis improves downstream gasification. Sequential processing creates cleaner, more valuable outputs.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
What’s Coming Next?
Circle Economy and partners are now advancing from lab-scale validation toward pilot-scale integration, with plans to address each challenge head-on:
- Optimize enzymatic hydrolysis for higher glucose yields
- Collaborate with product partners to design circular applications for PHA bioplastics
- Test diverse textile types to maximize clean syngas production
- Engage early with output buyers to define clear product specifications
The vision is a regional ecosystem where textile waste continuously cycles through biological and industrial systems, supported by the Netherlands’ innovation infrastructure and aligned with national circular economy goals.
The Question Is No Longer “Can We?” It’s “Will We?”
In nature, there is no such thing as waste. A fallen tree becomes shelter, then soil, then nutrients. Every ending is a beginning. Every breakdown is a building block.
The Netherlands pilot shows that even the most complex textile waste can be redirected into safer feedstocks for other industries and more intentional circular material pathways. What remains is the will to integrate, the investment to optimize, and the courage to reimagine what waste can become.
The Netherlands is modeling nature’s ingenuity in a practical and innovative manner. Now it’s time for the fashion industry, policymakers, and investors to meet this moment with the urgency it demands.
The Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation is led by the Biomimicry Institute and funded by Laudes Foundation. The Netherlands pilot is led by Circle Economy in partnership with BioFashionTech, EV Biotech, TNO, and Erdotex. Learn more at https://biomimicry.org/innovation/nature-of-fashion/ and d4t.biomimicry.org
1NL Times. (2025, February 3). Dutch fashion industry barely collecting discarded clothing for recycling. https://nltimes.nl/2025/02/03/dutch-fashion-industry-barely-collecting-discarded-clothing-recycling
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