Chicago-headquartered LanzaTech has partnered with outdoor brand Craghoppers to launch the new CO2Renu sustainable fleece collection that is now available both online and in stores.

LanzaTech’s biotech gives waste carbon a new life by recycling it into more sustainable versions of raw materials such as ethanol, which is a building block for many other chemicals including polyethylene and monoethylene glycol (MEG). MEG is a key ingredient in the manufacture of PET polyester. With the company’s technology, ethanol from pollution can be converted into the material needed to make textiles that would otherwise be made by extracting virgin fossil carbon.

LanzaTech has partnered with petrochemical company India Glycols Limited (IGL), a global leader in ethanol to glycol production, to convert its CarbonSmart Ethanol into MEG, and Far Eastern New Century of Taiwan to use the MEG in PET fibres production.

Comprised of 30% recycled carbon-derived PET and 70% PET from recycled plastic bottles, the Craghoppers CO2Renu range is shows how LanzaTech’s waste CO2 ingredients can integrate into existing commercial supply chains to accelerate the deployment of more sustainable products.

Textile waste, like solid waste, can be recycled mechanically, and there are some developments for the chemical recycling of textiles today at pilot scale. While LanzaTech’s process today captures industrial emissions to produce recycled carbon raw materials for the textiles industry, it is also compatible with textile waste as a feedstock. LanzaTech’s biorecycling technology can break the fabric down at the molecular level, regenerating waste fabric into the same raw materials. This is the circular economy in action – steel mill emissions are turned into ethanol and then into polyester, which can be broken down again to remake polyester without losing any product integrity.

Since 2018, LanzaTech’s technology has enabled customers to capture and process carbon gases before they enter the atmosphere and cause environmental harm. To date, the company’s technology has abated over 275,000 tons of carbon dioxide across four commercial plants. It will soon have the capacity to abate 500,000 tons annually when two more plants launch before the end of 2023, enabling a pathway to gigaton carbon abatement.

“LanzaTech’s carbon biorecycling technology aims to keep excess carbon out of the air and our oceans globally,” said Dr Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. “We have enough carbon available above ground to meet many of our everyday needs. With carbon recycling, we are creating a platform to replace virgin fossil carbon and enable circularity across multiple sectors.”

 “As a technical outdoor brand, polyester is one of our most commonly used fibres,” said Katie Cotterill, senior buyer manager on Craghoppers. “To be able to incorporate LanzaTech’s groundbreaking technology into our fabrics means that we are able to take the first step on our journey to using next-generation recycled fibres that don’t rely on recycled bottles.”

Founded in Batley in Yorkshire in the UK in1965, Craghoppers is well-known for its technologies ranging from the anti-insect clothing Nosilife range to its Aqua Dry waterproof clothing and Thermo Pro synthetic down.

www.lanzatech.com