What's CELYS' Approach?
Our clothes are made from either synthetic or natural fibres. About 60% of the fibres we use today are synthetic materials, such as polyester, nylon, acrylic, polyurethane, and so on. Among these synthetic fibres, polyester, dominantly PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is the most widely used because of its superior physical properties.
When washed, clothes always shed more or less tiny fibres, which are also called micro-fibres (less than 5 mm long). These micro-fibres almost freely pass through most of the wastewater treatment facilities, enter into rivers, lakes, and finally end up in the oceans. Among these microfibers, those from non-biodegradable plastics such as PET cause serious environmental and health concerns because they are found to have entered our food chain.
It has been estimated that every year there are about half a million tonnes of micro-fibres entering oceans due to washing clothes. This number will keep rising as the production and consumption of textiles are going up every year.
To reduce the negative impacts of plastic micro-fibres released from washing textiles, two strategies are being considered. They are i) developing new materials which can biodegrade to carbon dioxide, methane, water and biomass; ii) modifying the existing wastewater treatment facilities to effectively capture the released micro-fibers to prevent them from entering the rivers, lakes and oceans.
Our CELYS' approach is the first one, i.e. to develop a new kind of material that can be classified as biodegradable according to relevant standards. This novel material is actually polyester, with a trading name of “CELYS”. Compared with PET, it has similar mechanical properties, spinnability, and the capability to replace PET in almost all cases in textile applications.
Differing from PET, CELYS is hydrophilic, which imparts the fabrics made from it a superior moisture-wicking property. The most important feature of CELYS is that it is biodegradable. According to the lab reports from a third-party organisation, it fully biodegrades (>99%) within 180 days in an industry compost (ISO 14855), and biodegrades about 70% within 90 days in an aqueous medium (ISO 14852).
