Renewcell - Sweden

Renewcell is nominated for the 2023 Nordic Council Environment Prize. 

Renewcell is a world-leading sustaintech company with huge potential for making a difference by way of its pioneering and circular business model. To date, 60,000 tonnes of textile waste has been turned into Circulose® and closed the cycle within the textile industry.  

Renewcell’s innovative solution was developed thanks to research at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 2012. The circular technique was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the world’s 100 best inventions in 2020. The process involves collecting and recycling textile waste, such as cotton clothes, into a high-quality dissolving mass and patented textile material called Circulose®, which is ultimately turned into new clothes. Renewcell’s product is currently the only large-scale and commercially recycled textile-to-textile material of virgin quality, although the method can be used and scaled up across the globe.  

Renewcell also engages in active knowledge-building work and has participated in several UN climate summits to drive behavioural change and policy development for a sustainable fashion industry.  

The demand for textile recycling is expected to increase in light of the EU’s new ban on destroying unsold clothes and the goal that all textile products sold on the EU market should be recyclable and, to a large extent, made from recycled fibres.  

Innovations of this kind are central to the transition to a more sustainable and circular textile industry. This Nordic company is paving the way for large-scale and circular fashion in the future.