Materials & Sustainability
What Is Recycled PET (rPET) and How Is It Made?
rPET is made from collected PET bottles that are sorted, cleaned, shredded into flakes, melted down and spun into new fibres. According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), production requires around 59% less energy and produces about 32% fewer CO2 emissions than making polyester from new crude oil.
The production process, step by step
- Collection and sorting: used PET bottles are collected and sorted by colour/type.
- Cleaning: labels, caps and contaminants are removed, and the bottles are washed.
- Shredding: the cleaned bottles are shredded into fine flakes.
- Melting and spinning: the flakes are melted down and spun through fine nozzles into new polyester fibres – chemically identical to virgin fibres, just with a different raw material source.
The environmental footprint of production itself
According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a British recycling organisation, producing rPET requires around 59% less energy than producing polyester from new crude oil, and generates about 32% fewer CO2 emissions. No additional crude oil needs to be extracted for fibre production either.
An important caveat: downcycling
rPET fibres are typically shorter and somewhat weaker than virgin fibres. That means textile products made from rPET usually can't be recycled again into textile fibres at the end of their life, and are instead incinerated for energy recovery – a process known as downcycling. That doesn't fundamentally undermine the environmental benefit, but it's an honest point that's often missing from marketing copy.
Sources
- SHYFT Magazine: 'Recyceltes Polyester (rPET): Vor- und Nachteile' – Herstellungsprozess, WRAP-Zahlen zu Energie/CO2, Downcycling-Problematik
- Verpackungswirtschaft: 'R-PET (recyceltes PET)' – Downcycling, Faserqualität, Verwendungsanteile in Deutschland 2023
- RUNI: 'PET Flaschen Recycling - 7 Recycling Schritte' – technischer Ablauf mechanisches Recycling
Author: Moritz Weinert, Gründer NURO Labs · Last updated on 8 September 2026