Home topics news Sarah Cook, Chief Commercial and Operations Officer of Samsara Eco with the Swiftly Tech Long-Sleeve Top News Sustainability News Lululemon shows how to recycle clothes on a massive scale Yajush Gupta February 23, 2024 Australian enviro-tech startup, Samsara Eco , and its partner, athletic apparel brand, lululemon , have debuted the world’s first enzymatically recycled nylon 6,6 product. Using recycled nylon 6,6 made with Samsara Eco’s technology, lululemon has created samples of its iconic Swiftly Tech Long-Sleeve Top, representing the first time this type of nylon has been recycled in this way. The samples represent a key milestone that brings the fashion industry one step closer to creating a circular ecosystem. Roughly 4 million tonnes of nylon 6,6 is created per year. It’s one of the most commonly used plastics in the textile industry and is a foundational fibre used by lululemon to make many of its bestselling products. Nylon 6,6 has been notoriously difficult to recycle and because of its tough, heavy-duty properties has been used in a breadth of industries like fashion, automotive and electronics. Working with lululemon, Samsara Eco has pioneered a new (patent pending) technology that makes it possible to put waste to work by extracting nylon 6,6 from end-of-life stage textiles and demonstrates the potential to create a fully circular ecosystem for apparel. “Until now, textile-to-textile nylon 6,6 has been unrecyclable. The samples we have created with lululemon represent a world-first breakthrough for the future of textile waste. Our work with lululemon