BREMEN – Cotton Incorporated says it has developed a 100 per cent cotton elasticated fabric in an innovation that could alleviate much of the burden placed on textile recyclers when asked to upcycle cotton/elastane fabric blends at their end-of-life.
Natural Stretch is said to retain the properties of conventional stretch fabrics made in part with elastane, such as optimised fit, comfort and crucially, elasticity, but has instead been achieved via a “special mechanical manufacturing process” that gives stretch to fabrics made entirely of cotton.
As such, the material may provide textile recyclers with fewer problems at the fabric’s end-of-life, as elastane – commonly used in plated cotton knit fabrics – can be a very difficult material to recycle.
