Seeking Textiles Circularity in Sports Events

Circularity* in textiles is usually focused on the fashion industry, but sports and events are keen to be test-labs to accelerate solutions that could be rolled out to other sectors, by tackling what could be the greatest amount of single-use plastic for the industry - the banners and flags at events. In collaboration with Helly Hansen, Official Clothing Supplier for The Ocean Race 2022-23, the stopovers in The Hague and Genova are flying a flag made from flags that originally flew in the cities during The Ocean Race Europe in 2021.

Circularity Challenge

Given the significant volume, short lifespan and limited reuse possibilities, we must accelerate circularity in textiles used in sports and events. This project has been set up to show that it is possible to recycle banners and flags, and signal to the sports and events industry that this is a serious issue that must and can be addressed.

Currently, most materials end up in landfill or incineration, or if a major effort is made by event organisers to ensure resource recovery, banners and flags might be downcycled into padding and filling materials.

Seeing this as an unsolved sustainability challenge for sports and events, since 2020 The Ocean Race has been leading an international working group on ‘Sustainable Look and Overlay’ - which is focussing on how to reduce the volumes, source sustainability and accelerateing innovation and circularity. 

There are very few places in Europe to send textiles for recycling, even down-cycling. There are no facilities available in Spain or Italy, the start and the finish locations for The Ocean Race.

But thankfully, due to a pilot project with Helly Hansen, The Ocean Race is one step closer to proving circularity for textiles from sports events in Europe is possible. 

In 2021 Helly Hansen and The Ocean Race participated in an advanced recycling project for textiles, with 30kg of flags and banners recovered from The Ocean Race Europe, which finished in Genova, Italy. 

Helly Hansen led the initiative with a view to proving that textiles from events could be used as genuine materials inputs in future sports clothing manufacture. 

“Textile to textile recycling is the only way our industry can be fully circular. While we are not yet there, it is important for us as a brand to explore the current opportunities and support recyclers in scaling up their innovative technologies.” Åsa Andersson, Sustainability Director, Helly Hansen.

The materials from The Ocean Race were taken to gr3n, for innovative recycling treatment at their test facility in Italy. Using a technology that returns the plastic to a high quality raw ingredient, the result was three ‘bobbins’ of recycled polyester yarn. Read more about the technology at the end of this article. 

In a true value chain collaboration - under the curation of long-time supplier to The Ocean Race, FaberExposize BV (who are highly engaged in addressing sustainability issues in the production of branding materials), this yarn was taken by textile manufacturer Georg Otto Friedrich who agreed to mix it with yarn made from recycled PET bottles to produce a textile prepared for digital printing. This resulted in Re-Beach 90821RCGS material.

Flagowa Kraina received this unique material and produced new flags for The Ocean Race using water based inks.

This is the first time that flags have been fully recycled into new flags.“In all my work as one of the largest flag manufacturers in the world, this is the first time that I’ve been able to trace an event flag, recycled and made back into another event flag. This is a great step towards look and overlay products becoming more sustainable and provides a good example for the other markets our type of products are used in.” Wouter Faber, FaberExposize.

By working together with various partners in this recycling project, we have proven it is possible to recycle textile branding materials back into textile branding materials.

The flag was flown at The Hague stopover and Grand Finale in Genova in June 2023, and then onwards at The Ocean Race headquarters in Alicante, Spain.

The State of the Problem with Sports Events’s Textiles and Recycling Today

The enormity of the problem of single-use plastic at events has not been quantified. 

The Ocean Race surveyed the industry, to try and understand the scale of the issue,  and it was apparent that only a small number of events are measuring the volume of materials used, know the event’s plastic footprint, or understand what the end of life processing will be for single-use plastic and specifically textiles.

Currently, the only option for textile banners and flags from events in Europe is ‘down-cycling’ into filling materials for cushions, padding, insulation etc. The high strengths of the banner and flag materials makes them unsuitable for traditional mechanical recycling typical of other plastics such as bottles and containers.

During the Sustainable Look and Overlay collaboration, the working group agreed that plastic waste generated by these materials could be the largest single-use plastic source at events, overshadowing cups or food packaging. 

To this end, The Ocean Race also led the development of the Plastic Stewardship and Footprint Methodology for Events - to help support the industry to measure and disclose the extent of single-use plastic used by events. Download the methodology. 

During the The Ocean Race in 2023, the race is attempting to quantify the volume of materials used and report on the end-of-life processing options. This data will feed into the overall ‘plastic footprint’ of the race. 

Looking Ahead

With the encouragement and co-ordination of The Ocean Race’s production supplier FaberExposize, and the ongoing interest and support from Helly Hansen who wish to use authentically circular textile inputs into their garment range, the group have joined with gr3n again to take 300 kg of banner and flag materials collected from the global race and Genova the Grand Finale, for another pilot recycling run in the gr3n demo plant in Albese con Cassano.

gr3n is accepting The Ocean Race materials, so that we can showcase to the events and sports sector what the future of textiles circularity looks like. 

As supplier to The Ocean Race of branding materials for many editions this project was coordinated by FaberExposize BV. 

“This has been a terrific exercise in diving into the manufacturing process, use, recovery and potential circularity for materials we use to brand our event sites. The amount of single-use plastic materials used at events every day around the world must be mountainous, and just about all of it ends up in landfill. Bringing together all those responsible for these materials at every stage is helping to accelerate circularity.” Meegan Jones, Sustainability Programme Advisor, The Ocean Race.

About the technology

gr3n’s process returns used PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) into new PET with the same quality as virgin PET,  applying  microwave technology to alkaline hydrolysis, but starting from recycled monomers.

Otherwise known as ‘chemical’ recycling, the plastic is ‘depolymerized’. This process essentially breaks the plastic down into the chemical components it was originally made from. (i.e. terephthlaic acid, TPA and monoethylen glycol, MEG).

And unlike ‘mechanical recycling’, where the plastic is chopped or shaved down, melted and made into lower-grade plastic pellets, this new technology allows true and continual circularity - textiles can be turned into textiles again using high quality recycled PET inputs.

“Textile-to-textile recycling is much more than transforming post-consumer garments/clothes into something new, as this is just a solution to part of the problem. There are other applications using polyester fibres such as non-wovens, cables, insulation panels, technical textiles, flags and many more, that we can do something tangible with. With this project we are showing how the collaboration between the whole value chain can provide great results." Fabio Silvestri, PhD, Head of Marketing and Business Development, gr3n.

gr3n is still in its startup phase and although they have a proven process, there is no industrial scale recycling capacity available yet. Their next objective is a demo plant that will be taken into production during 2023 and a full-scale industrial facility to be taken into production during 2027.

Check out this short film to find out more about the project.

Parties involved:

• The Ocean Race
• Helly Hansen
• gr3n (chemical recycler) 
• Georg Otto Friedrich (textile manufacturer)
• Flagowa Kraina (large format print company)
• FaberExposize (supplier to TOR of branding materials)

* ‘Textiles circularity’ is achieved when textiles are collected at the end of their life for recycling, and the recycled material becomes the raw ingredient to make new textiles - rather than being downcycled into lower grade items, which just delaysing it becoming wastes final disposal.. This is ‘closed loop’ recycling - meaning that the system is circular - with a continuous flow of materials through the cycle. By keepingClosed loop recycling - ‘circularity’ - keeps valuable materialsresources cycling throughout the manufacturing, use and disposal phases , therefore needing far fewer virgin resources are needed.