Introducing our debut range of recycled yarn
55% Recycled textile waste fibre + 45% Australian merino wool
Available now at Citizenwolf.com

We’re collaborating with a new Hong Kong recycling plant that has dramatically improved the fibre recovery process.

This innovative new facility can clean, sort, shred and reconstitute textile waste to be spun into new yarn; employing a system that requires no water, dye, detergent or bleach, and produces no chemical discharge. 
With their help, we’re giving a second life to discarded textiles that may otherwise end up in Australian landfill.
Waterless laundering
Higher fibre yield
No bleaching or dyeing
Mechanised sorting

Collect

Pre and post–consumer textile waste is collected from people and businesses around Sydney, NSW. Including charity stores, manufacturers, fashion labels and retailers.

Recover

Collected waste is sent to the Hong Kong recycling plant for fibre recovery, where everything is Ozone laundered, colour sorted and shredded down to a fibrous fleece.

Spin

Recovered waste fibres are combined with complementary virgin fibres and spun into various weights of yarn. This happens at a spinning mill in Zhuhai, China– about 80km west of Hong Kong.

Create

The resulting weights comprise our range of recycled yarns, suitable for independent makers and commercial manufacturers.

Artboard 16

‘Fibre First’ design

To avoid the use of water, bleach and dyestuff, waste items are mechanically sorted by colour before shredding. Once spun, this results in a tonally consistent yarn; the colour of which is entirely determined by the different waste items that were combined to create it.

An absolute necessity

Advancing our capacity to recycle textiles is crucial if we hope to shift society away from its current reliance on landfill.

Garment production doubled between 2000 to 2014; exceeding 100 billion garments in 2014
Industry estimates that every 1kg of new fabric produces 23kg of greenhouse gases
A single t-shirt requires 2,720 litres of water to produce, while a pair of jeans requires 10,850
Apparel and footwear consumption is projected to reach 102 million tons by 2030
An estimated 85% of Australian textile waste ends up in landfill every year
In 2017 Australians disposed of 6,000kg of textile waste every 10 minutes

This unsustainable reliance on landfill is pushing Australians down a dangerous path towards environmental degradation.

Intervention is more necessary than ever. This includes better, more environmentally conscientious production practices, a less wasteful approach to consumption and use, and the development of more comprehensive civic and industrial systems to recycle waste. The latter being what we’re focused on.

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