Hyosung: How Creora 3D Max Spandex Solved the Challenge of High-Stretch Recyclable Jeans

Jeans are increasingly being required to meet circular standards as industry watchers and consumers put pressure on brands and factories to reduce their environmental impact through reuse
.

In response, companies are looking to develop denim that is easier to recycle
.
Many companies are following the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's jeans redesign guidelines for recyclable jeans
.
As of July, 94 producers signed up to the program, including multi-billion-dollar retailers such as American Eagle Outfitters, GAP, H&M, Levi Strauss & Co.
, Primark and Urban Outfitters, as well as upstream factory partners
.

The standard for jeans redesign is to create jeans that are at the same time more durable, easier to disassemble and recycle
.
Among those guidelines is a rule that requires jeans to be at least 98 percent cellulosic, such as cotton, hemp, linen, lycra or modal
.
This leaves only 2% of the content for elastic or synthetic materials
.

Maintaining the 2% limit has proven to be one of the top challenges for participants as retailers seek to serve consumers accustomed to high stretch and comfort, according to a two-year progress report on the jeans redesign project
.
This demand for stretchy jeans involves different >
.
Sales of stretchy men's jeans rose 40% in the 12 months ended January 2020, according to the NPD Group
.
During the same period, women's stretch jeans grew by 8%, and 88% of all women's jeans sold in the previous year had some stretch element
.
Even trendy silhouettes like mom jeans and wide-leg pants often feature some stretch
.

According to Mike Simko, global marketing director of textiles at Hyosung Corporation, high elasticity and circularity are compatible
.
The spandex manufacturer aims to help participants in the jeans redesign project increase the number of jeans that meet the program's standards
.

"It's clear from the beginning that people have shown they want to be resilient," Simko said.
"The
question becomes, how does the spandex industry respond and make it sustainable and circular from the start
.
"

The industry wants denim stretches of more than 50 percent, with up to a 5 percent increase
.
Traditional spandex can provide stretch, but recovery will not be up to par - regardless of the percentage of spandex in the textile
.
To achieve the required resilience, the typical solution is to mix polyester with spandex to create a dual core that bounces back more efficiently
.
One solution is to combine cellulosic fibers with elastic polyester and elastane for recovery purposes, but this increased polyester content means that synthetic yarns make up 12 to 16 percent of the finished garment, making denim less expensive.
Cloth couldn't meet the 98 percent threshold for jeans redesign
.

Hyosung's creora 3D Max offers a solution to achieve a balance of stretch and recyclability, as it provides high-performance stretch even as a fraction of the fabric composition
.
This yarn swaps the typical polyester core for spandex, creating a fully stretched material that retains the recycled properties of the polyester-spandex combination
.

In addition to greater resilience, 3D Max offers quality improvements
.
Polyester components are not dyed the same way as cotton, leading to potential color defects such as white spots
.
In contrast, Creora 3D Max prevents irregular dyeing problems by eliminating polyester and reducing the composition to only 2% of textiles
.
In addition, polyester has not responded well to the increasingly popular eco-friendly laser finishing process
.

Currently, 3D Max is used by 17 different factories in markets including Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Turkey and China
.

Sam Chan, Assistant Sales Director at Panther Denim in Hong Kong, said: "Major denim brands are interested in eco-friendly processing
.
Hyosung's creora 3D Max enables us to produce recyclable, highly elastic and laser-friendly by not using polyester Denim
.
"

Turkey-based creora 3D Max customer Kipas currently uses sustainable materials for half of its production
.
Hurriyet Ozturk, development director of Kipas, said: "Our collaboration with Hyosung allows us to offer many sustainable solutions to our brand partners
.
"

To improve the life cycle assessment of spandex, Hyosung has developed creora regen spandex, which is made from 100% pre-consumer waste and has a 67% smaller carbon footprint than conventional spandex
.
The company has also introduced a bio-based spandex that trades fossil fuel inputs for corn, extracting carbon from the atmosphere as the crop grows
.
While there is currently no bio-based or regenerative version of creora 3D Max, Hyosung is working on these varieties
.

To keep spandex out of landfills, researchers are investigating the potential of biodegradable elastic fibers
.
Hyosung is part of a project to explore enzymes that break down elastic yarns
.

"The spandex industry is changing," Simko said.
"
Now, we're not just looking at inputs, but end-of-life issues
.
"