Circ Polycotton Textile-to-Textile Recycling

Circ is a textile-to-textile recycling company headquartered in Danville, Virginia, United States, with the mission to protect the planet from the cost of clothing. It targets polycotton blends, one of the most common and hardest-to-recycle fabric types, where earlier methods destroyed either the polyester or the cotton.

Circ sorts and mechanically resizes polycotton waste from industry sources, then uses patented hydrothermal processing to separate polyester and cellulose and recover both. The outputs, recycled PTA, MEG and cellulosic pulp, become Circ Polyester and Circ Lyocell, offered as drop-in fibres to spinners, mills and brands. A Circ-Ready network of vetted mills, spinners and manufacturers integrates the materials into production, and brands such as BESTSELLER and Primark source them.

• Polycotton separation: hydrothermal processing separates polyester from cotton and keeps both.
• Monomer recovery: polyester is returned as recycled PTA and MEG for new polyester.
• Cellulosic pulp: the cotton fraction becomes pulp for Circ Lyocell fibre.
• Drop-in fibres: Circ Polyester and Circ Lyocell fit existing spinning and weaving lines.
• Circ-Ready network: vetted mills, spinners and manufacturers trained to work with Circ materials.
• Global capacity: operations in the USA, an industrial plant under construction in France and a site with Huafon in China.

Vietnamese spinners and weavers could join the Circ-Ready network to supply fabrics with Circ Lyocell or Circ Polyester to BESTSELLER, Primark and other buyers. Garment exporters producing uniforms and shirts in polycotton could route cutting waste into Circ feedstock streams. Textile groups planning recycling investments could explore a regional partnership similar to the Huafon site.

Circ recovers both fibres from polycotton waste instead of sacrificing one, which raises the recyclable share of real garment waste. Materials are drop-in ready, so mills and brands can adopt them without stopping operations or overhauling processes. The planned France plant is designed to process up to 70,000 tonnes of textile waste per year and the China site about 200 tonnes per day in phase 1, giving brands a path to volume.

Polycotton blends dominate workwear, uniforms and fast fashion, yet most are downcycled or landfilled. Brands face EU and US rules on textile waste and recycled content, and are moving recycling capacity into Asian textile hubs through partners in China and India. Garment-exporting countries such as Vietnam generate large volumes of polycotton cutting waste that could feed this capacity.

Headquartered at 660 Kentuck Road, Danville, Virginia, USA. Investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Certified B Corp. Partnerships with Tangshan Sanyou (July 2025), Arvind Limited in India (September 2025), Xinxiang Bailu Chemical Fiber (March 2026) and Huafon (October 2026); building its first industrial plant in France.