A range of home textiles based on Eastman’s Naia Renew were displayed at Heimtextil 2024 in Frankfurt (January 9-12^th), from leading brands including Alkaram, Huafang, North Home, Ozanteks Tekstil and WestPoint Home.

This follows on from successful collaborations with apparel brands such as H&M and Patagonia over the past few years.

Making its Heimtextil debut, Eastman showcased a range of soft, quick-drying towels and sustainable sheets and duvets produced by its growing list of partners using the new cellulose acetate staple fibre, which is based on 60% sustainably-sourced wood pulp and 40% certified waste materials.

“Naia Renew is now available at scale and is certified biodegradable and compostable,” said global segment market manager Chad Doub. “It can also be blended with many other fibres.”

Eastman, he explained, is working to transform waste materials that are difficult to recycle and which would otherwise not have an end-of-life option into biodegradable fibres through its patented carbon renewal technology (CNR).

This is one of Eastman’s two molecular recycling technologies that break materials down into basic molecular building blocks, assuring end materials are indistinguishable from those made from traditional sources in quality, performance or appearance.

Eastman aims to have 50% of all its own products made with Naia Renew by 2025 and to lower the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of the current Naia portfolio by 40% by 2030.

Eastman is currently investing around $2.25 billion in molecular recycling technologies that can consume hard-to-recycle textile waste and in addition to the cellulose acetate for Naia, can turn it into new PET monomers and polymers for fibres and filaments that are also said to be indistinguishable from their fossil-fuel based equivalents.

Headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, USA, Eastman had 2022 sales of $10.58 billion and 14,500 employees globally at December 2022.

Its first recycling plant – based on a process called methanolysis –  is already operational in Kingsport, Tennessee, where the company is headquartered, and will have a capacity of 110,000 tons when fully ramped up.

A second plant in Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine in Normandy, France, is planned for start-up in 2026 and will have an initial capacity of 110,000 tons in its first phase, rising to 200,000 tons in the second phase of development. The company plans to have a third plant at a location yet to be decided in the USA also operational by 2026, bringing its total textile waste recycling capacity to 330,000 tons by that time.

www.eastman.com