Circ expands its Fiber Club with Madewell, Reformation, and C&A, building on past Zara and Patagonia pilots to scale recycled polycotton fiber amid growing EPR regulation.
Circ is widening the circle on textile-to-textile recycling. The U.S.-based innovator has expanded its Fiber Club, bringing Madewell, Reformation, and C&A into a commercial consortium designed to accelerate the use of recycled polycotton at scale. The initiative links brands directly with supply chain partners Lenzing and Linz Textil, creating a coordinated pathway from discarded garments to finished yarn.
“With Circ’s technology proven, the next phase of scaling is to lower the barriers to commercialization,” Peter Majeranowski, CEO of Circ, said in a statement. “Brands are increasingly facing pressure from the market to reduce waste and use better materials, and there’s a shared understanding across the industry that the status quo can’t continue. The Fiber Club model operates within existing manufacturing systems to address the costs and complexity that have held brands back, making circular materials viable today.”
The new cohort builds on Fiber Club’s January 2025 debut, when Circ convened Bestseller, Eileen Fisher, Everlane, and Zalando alongside Arvind, Birla Cellulose, and Foshan Chicley. At the time, the company positioned the program as a response to one of fashion’s most persistent obstacles: minimum order quantities and price volatility that make next-generation fibers difficult to adopt beyond limited capsules. By pooling demand across pulp, fiber, and yarn production, Fiber Club spreads financial risk and increases purchasing power, enabling brands to move from pilot runs to sustained material commitments.
Under the expanded structure, each participating label is developing collections using TENCEL | Circ with REFIBRA technology. The fiber contains 30 percent Circ pulp derived from recycled polycotton waste. Circ supplies the recycled pulp to Lenzing, which converts it into lyocell fibers under its TENCEL platform, incorporating its REFIBRA process that blends recycled and responsibly sourced wood pulp. Linz Textil spins the fibers into yarn, while each brand selects its own fabric mills and garment manufacturers to integrate the material into existing supply chains. The design allows companies already working with Lenzing fibers to transition without overhauling production systems.
The timing aligns with mounting regulatory scrutiny. Proposed extended producer responsibility legislation in the United States and Europe would require brands to finance textile waste management, reinforcing the commercial case for scalable recycling infrastructure. As policymakers signal tighter oversight, access to verified recycled inputs is becoming less experimental and more operational.
The announcement also builds on several years of commercial testing. In 2023, Circ partnered with Inditex’s Zara on a limited collection incorporating recycled polycotton fibers, marking one of the first large-scale retail validations of its hydrothermal recycling technology. Earlier pilots with Patagonia and Eileen Fisher explored recovering blended cotton-polyester fabrics, a notoriously difficult waste stream to recycle mechanically because fibers are chemically intertwined. According to Circ, its process separates and recovers both polyester and cellulose components, enabling them to be reused in new textiles rather than downcycled.
Industry data underscores the urgency. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that less than one percent of clothing is recycled back into new garments, with the majority either landfilled or incinerated. Meanwhile, the European Union has advanced extended producer responsibility proposals for textiles, and several U.S. states, including California, have introduced similar legislation that would require brands to finance end-of-life collection and recycling systems.
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