Nike World Cup Uniforms Made of Recycled Textiles Won’t Solve Fashion Waste | WIREDSkip to main contentMenuSECURITYPOLITICSTHE BIG STORYBUSINESSSCIENCECULTUREREVIEWSMenuAccountAccountNewslettersSecurityPoliticsThe Big StoryBusinessScienceCultureReviewsChevronMoreExpandThe Big InterviewMagazineEventsWIRED InsiderWIRED ConsultingNewslettersPodcastsVideoLivestreamsMerchSearchSearchJoseph WintersScienceMay 30, 2026 4:30 AMThe Problem With Nike’s World Cup Uniforms Made of TrashThe activewear giant has used chemical recycling to make jersey for 16 teams competing in the tournament. But the technique is unlikely to help solve fashion’s waste issue.Courtesy of NikeCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyIn June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing.Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste.Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion—that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated.Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon.Courtesy of Nike“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at UC San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so—at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh.What seems more likely is the fashion industry will expand its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric—and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester—mostly through recycling.The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so that anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear.The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ’90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units—building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality.That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multiyear agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries in the US.Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can, in principle, produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about postconsumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible—at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pretreatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes … be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said.Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively?Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s—whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes—production of “circular” fabric would likely pale in comparison to the more than 169 million metric tons of polyester projected to be manufactured annually by then. Dionisios Vlachos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”Instead, companies need to “reverse the trend of fast fashion,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation. That means making less clothing overall, whether it contains recycled or virgin materials. Last year, growth in recycled polyester—mostly from bottles—was dwarfed by an even larger increase in the production of fossil-fuel-based polyester.Urbancic sees chemical recycling as “an excuse to keep producing plastic clothes” and advocates for a shift away from polyester altogether; the material sheds microfibers and may expose consumers to hazardous chemicals.Nike, Syre, and Loop Industries did not respond to interview requests or a detailed list of questions, highlighting a transparency problem flagged by Singla, Vlachos, and others Grist spoke with. Industry confidentiality makes it difficult to know what’s actually going on in these firms—and whether “#TheGreatTextileShift” they promise will be different from failed chemical recycling initiatives in the past.It’s worth noting that Loop Industries has never turned a profit since its founding in 2010. The company is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission following a 2020 report accusing it of systematically misrepresenting its technology to regulators and investors, and in 2022 it settled a class-action lawsuit over similar accusations. Syre, for its part, has not said how the “gigascale” factory it plans to build in Vietnam will be able to process consumers’ old clothes, given the country’s ban on used apparel imports.“It remains to be seen whether [Nike’s announcement] amounts to anything,” Singla said. 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Nike’s initiative to use advanced chemical recycling to create World Cup uniforms from 100 percent textile waste is presented as a potential turning point for sustainable fashion, suggesting that circular clothing capable of repeated recycling may be accessible to consumers. However, experts contend that this development does not solve the broader fashion waste issue in the foreseeable future. While Nike has partnered with chemical recycling companies, skepticism remains regarding the scalability and real-world viability of this technology for mainstream application. Researchers like Veena Singla suggest that while technically possible, achieving a system where consumers can easily recycle used clothing into new apparel is not imminent. Furthermore, the text indicates that the industry is more likely to expand the use of recycling techniques on industrial scrap fabric rather than mass postconsumer clothing, especially given the complexity introduced by mixed textile streams.

The fashion industry faces significant environmental challenges, producing over 100 billion articles of clothing annually, which contributes to substantial greenhouse gas emissions and an enormous amount of waste that is often landfilled or incinerated. This waste generation is exacerbated by the reliance on fossil fuels, as nearly seventy percent of clothing is made from oil-derived fabrics, predominantly polyester. Efforts to boost circularity, particularly through chemical means, are positioned as an alternative to traditional mechanical recycling, which necessitates blending recycled fibers with virgin material to maintain fabric quality. Chemical recycling involves using solvents to break down fibers into their base chemical units, theoretically allowing for the creation of virgin-quality polyester through repeated cycles.

Despite the theoretical promise of chemical recycling—offering a truly circular solution that does not depend on existing bottles—significant technical constraints exist. Textile researchers note that chemical recycling is highly dependent on the quality and composition of the waste stream. It works best with uniform industrial scrap fabric; processing postconsumer textile waste, which includes complex blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, acrylics, dyes, and various coatings, is considerably more complex and less feasible without meticulous, repeated pretreatment to remove contaminants. Researchers observed that for chemical recycling to produce material comparable to virgin polyester, the waste must ideally be 100 percent polyester, free of toxic chemicals.

Further challenges relate to infrastructure and scalability. Experts agree that establishing the necessary infrastructure for companies to accept used clothing and implement technologies like methanolysis remains a significant undertaking. There is uncertainty regarding who will build this infrastructure, whether it will be driven by companies, governments, or collaborative efforts. Moreover, projections suggest that even if the industry achieves optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s, this production volume will likely be dwarfed by the projected annual manufacturing of polyester. In contrast, some industry leaders advocate for a more fundamental shift, urging companies to reverse the trend of fast fashion by reducing overall clothing production, regardless of the material composition. Furthermore, concerns have been raised regarding the motivations behind the push for chemical recycling, with some commentators viewing it as a mechanism to continue plastic production rather than eliminating it, while also pointing to transparency issues within the industry regarding the actual performance and financial sustainability of these recycling ventures.