MIT engineers develop recyclable stretchy yarn to cut US textile waste

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a new stretchy yarn made entirely from two grades of polyethylene, a common thermoplastic used in milk jugs and grocery bags. The yarn mimics the strength and elasticity of traditional spandex blends while being fully melt‑reprocessable; it can be melted down and respun repeatedly without loss of performance. Researchers say the single‑material design could enable recycling of stretchy garments that currently account for 80 % of U.S. textiles and are largely non‑recyclable.

The United States discards about 81 pounds of clothing per person each year, amounting to more than 11 million tons of textile waste sent to landfills or incinerators. By replacing spandex‑polyester or spandex‑nylon blends with this polyethylene yarn, the textile industry could close a major recycling gap and reduce landfill burden.

“Eighty percent of textiles on the U.S. market currently contain some amount of spandex, which makes them nonrecyclable,” said MIT research scientist Svetlana Boriskina.