The Crucial Role of Startups in Fashion’s Green Transition: Our Take!

Fashion: an industry in need of transformation

Fashion, often seen as a field of creativity and self-expression, is also one of the most polluting industries. Responsible for 20% of global wastewater and 10% of carbon emissions, the sector faces an urgent need for transformation. Startups are at the heart of this shift, bringing essential innovation, agility, and environmental commitment to an industry that can be rigid and slow to evolve.

The key role of startups

Unlike large corporations, often constrained by heavy structures and complex processes, startups have the flexibility to explore groundbreaking solutions. They pioneer new materials—sometimes bio-based—, technologies for full traceability, and truly circular models.

At ECOLLANT, we’ve chosen to tackle a specific challenge: textile waste management, particularly polyamide blended with other fibers. This material, omnipresent in our clothing, presents a complex recycling challenge, which we address with an innovative extraction process that enables closed-loop recycling.

From innovation to impact: the power of collaboration

🔹 But innovation alone is not enough.
Real impact comes from strong collaborations with industrial players. By combining the agility of startups with the execution power of large companies, we can move from promising prototypes to large-scale implementation. This synergy significantly accelerates fashion’s green transition. In addition, consumer engagement, public policies, and financial support are essential to sustain a more sustainable industry.

💡 At ECOLLANT, we believe that fashion’s transformation must be a collective priority, an entire industry effort.
Thinking in terms of a full supply chain might take longer than isolated efforts, but it creates deeper impact, from collecting end-of-life textiles to launching circular products on the market.

♻️ From recycled to recyclable!

Since our founding in 2019, we’ve worked tirelessly to build a winning model, supported by key institutional players who have been instrumental in our journey. These partners, including the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Region, AER BFC, ADEME, Bpifrance, and CHEMTECH, have trusted us with dedicated support programs and continue to accompany us toward our industrial-scale deployment.

📊 Data source:

  • United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2018 report: “Fashion and the Environment”, highlighting the massive environmental footprint of the textile industry.
  • The Good Goods article: “What is ‘Grand Export’?” – 2025.

Global Recycling Day: A Collective Commitment

Global Recycling Day: why it matters

Today, we celebrate Global Recycling Day, a key moment to reflect on our impact on the planet and the actions we can take to preserve our natural resources.

At ECOLLANT, this day holds special significance.
As pioneers in textile and polyamide recycling, our mission is to reshape how we manage waste—particularly our old clothes. Our goal? To turn circularity into reality, drive material innovation, and develop new sustainable solutions.

🔄 Textile Recycling: A Key Driver for the Ecological Transition

Textile recycling: a driver for the ecological transition

The textile recycling sector plays a crucial role in reducing our environmental footprint. By reintegrating materials from used textiles, we reduce the demand for virgin resources and help build a more sustainable economic model.

However, the journey ahead remains long and requires strong collaboration across the entire ecosystem: collection and sorting centers, industries, fashion brands, and production chains. That’s why ECOLLANT prioritizes strengthening partnerships across the value chain, creating a true circular economy within the textile industry.

Today, more than ever, the transition to a circular economy is essential.

🤝 How are you contributing to this transition?
Share your initiatives and best practices with us—we’d love to exchange ideas and work together toward a more sustainable future!

Wrapping Up Global Industrie 2025… What an Experience!

Global Industrie 2025: what an experience

Four intense days filled with inspiring connections, strategic discussions, and game-changing confirmations: the industry of the future is already taking shape, and ECOLLANT is proud to be part of it 🚀.

💬 “In this world, who are the front-line fighters besides the soldiers?”

This powerful statement from François Bayrou, delivered during his speech on Thursday, resonated deeply. Industry is on the front line—driving both reindustrialization and the ecological transition.

🔹 Key Takeaways from This Edition

Key takeaways from this edition

✔️ Circular economy is no longer a side topic—it’s now central to industrial strategies, unlocking real business opportunities.
ECOLLANT demonstrated this alongside fellow industrial pioneers like Carbon Waters, BATCONNECT, ENTENT, MAPEA, and many more.
💡 We proved that circularity is not only feasible—it’s profitable.

✔️ Strategic partnerships are accelerating the shift towards sustainability.
Discussions with industrial leaders, local authorities, and key players like ADEME and Métropole de Lyon highlight a shared commitment to scaling sustainable models.

✔️ The Collectif Startups Industrielles France is playing a vital role in helping innovations scale from prototype to full industrial deployment—a challenge we know all too well!
Special thanks to Véronique GRICOURT 🧩 for giving us the stage at CSI’s booth on Thursday, and to Alphadio Olory-Togbe for the great discussion on industrial scale-up in textiles!

🔹 What’s Next for ECOLLANT?

What’s next for Ecollant?

This event has reinforced our ambitions:
💪 Scaling up our polyamide recycling technology
♻️ Pushing for a zero-waste, circular textile industry
🚀 Strengthening our industrial partnerships to accelerate deployment

An enormous thank you to Bpifrance, La French Fab, Start Industrie, and everyone who made this #JourBleu possible!

The industry of the future will be circular—or it won’t exist at all. 💪

📸 Photo Credits: Alexandre Badot & Start Industrie

Industrial Pilot: A Key Milestone for Scaling Up

The industrial pilot: a key step to scaling up

Developing a technology in a laboratory is one thing. Making it work on a large scale is another challenge entirely. This is where the industrial pilot comes in—a crucial phase in the industrialization of any innovation, especially in a complex and underexplored field like textile recycling.

When it comes to recycling polyamide and complex textiles, the challenges are numerous.
An industrial pilot bridges the gap between scientific validation and large-scale implementation. It allows us to test the technology under near-real production and performance conditions, ensuring its economic and environmental viability. This is particularly critical in a project like ours 😉 Fanny Lhuilier, Florian Ribeiro, Louise Gilbert, Thomas Felpin, Faustine Berthy

Why is it such a strategic step?

✅ Stability & reliability: A demonstrator ensures the stability of the process at a larger scale, confirming its reproducibility in an industrial environment. By analyzing all industrial variables, we can validate the robustness of the system.

✅ Cost & investment control: Scaling up allows us to identify and optimize production costs, maintenance, and logistics, helping us refine our business model. Economic viability is crucial to ensuring the long-term success of an industrial-scale process.

✅ Scalability: A key question is whether the process can scale up efficiently. Only through an industrial pilot can we simulate the transition from a few hundred kilos to several tons of recycled material while maintaining performance.

The pilot at the heart of Ecollant’s strategy

At Ecollant, this industrial pilot is at the core of our strategy to revolutionize polyamide recycling from complex textiles. This project is preparing us to scale up our technology, ensuring optimized yields, viable production, and high-quality recycled material.

We know that a project like ours—at the crossroads of industry, chemistry, and the circular economy—requires a long-term vision. And we’re committed to making it a reality.

What is planned obsolescence? An issue that also affects textiles!

Planned obsolescence refers to a strategy where certain products are deliberately designed to last only a few years, encouraging consumers to renew their purchases more frequently. While this practice is often associated with electronics, it also exists in the textile sector.

Planned obsolescence in textiles: how it works

In the textile industry, obsolescence can be subtle but very much present.

Here’s what we observe:
1️⃣ Poor quality fibers: clothes made with low-quality materials, which wear out quickly, pill, or even tear after a few washes.
2️⃣ Fast fashion: a frantic pace of collections pushing people to refresh their wardrobe quickly, even when the clothes are still in good condition.
3️⃣ Clothes hard to repair & recycle: fragile seams or blends of non-recyclable fibers often make repairs or recycling difficult, reinforcing their short life cycle. 😉 Paul Dumesny & Olivia PERRIER

In short, it’s a production designed to be fast and cheap, at the expense of everything else! What if we could change this? 🙌

On our side, we continue to work with the French Institute of Textile and Clothing (IFTH) 😉 Carole AUBRY, Axelle Champion, PASCAL RUMEAU to develop durable filaments from every perspective.

Why is this problematic?

Textile obsolescence, particularly linked to synthetic fibers like polyamide, has impressive consequences.

Polyamide, one of the most used synthetic fibers, represents 5.4 million tons produced each year. It is part of a global textile industry that exceeds 70 million tons.

👉 The problem? Limited recycling and extremely slow decomposition, which makes it a major contributor to plastic pollution.

At the same time, the lifespan of clothes has halved in the past 15 years, fueling overconsumption and an explosion in textile waste.

These figures highlight the urgency of developing both technical and cultural solutions by raising awareness among consumers to make more responsible clothing choices.

Our commitment with Ecollant

We are working daily to counter this short-life logic. Our research aims to recycle textiles containing #polyamide to reduce the impacts linked to the end of life of these products, whether they are of good or poor quality.

Our goal is to industrially recycle these textiles, which until now were buried or burned, and also raise awareness among the broader public so that everyone makes more responsible consumption choices in the textile sector. 😉

Source: McKinsey & Company Circular Economy Platform

What if we told you about R&D programs?

Have you heard of enzymes?

What are enzymes?

Imagine a tiny, super-efficient machine that speeds up chemical reactions in organisms, like in the human body, for example. These machines are proteins found in all living organisms, and they help do a lot of things, like digest our food or produce energy.

At Ecollant, we are always ready to take on technological and environmental challenges that would help evolve the textile industry by replacing certain traditional processes that harm the environment with greener processes.

Tackling a major recycling puzzle

That’s why, for several years, we have been exploring how these little enzyme wonders can help us solve a major puzzle: extracting nylon from the mixed fibers found in our end-of-life clothing to create a nylon that has the same quality as virgin material, produced by traditional petrochemical processes.

Elastane and nylon, for example, are two materials used as filaments interwoven together at a very small scale to make tights. This is what makes their separation and recycling impossible with traditional technologies.

But, once separated, if we could develop an enzyme capable of breaking down the nylon, it would be a revolution! We could recycle all mixed textiles, including tights, much more easily and in a more eco-friendly way. 🌍♻️

Our team of researchers is developing and testing this solution in the lab. To put it very simply, the process is like looking for the perfect key to open a very special lock.

Enzymes at the heart of our innovation

This approach is at the heart of our innovation. By exploring the power of enzymes, we are working to develop breakthrough recycling methods that are even more effective than those available today. Moreover, these are technologies with a measured environmental impact that aim for a more virtuous textile production, which has been previously labeled as the second most polluting and CO2-emitting industry in the world.

Stay tuned to discover our next advancements! 🌱🔬