They look just like new, but Levi’s 501s are now made from liquified fibers of old jeans

For years, the fashion industry has been trying to recycle fabrics similar to the way we currently recycle aluminum cans or paper. Levi’s has solved a small piece of that puzzle.

Every year, the $1.3 trillion global fashion industry churns out more than 100 billion garments, the vast majority of which are made by extracting new raw materials like cotton and oil (which is used to create synthetic materials like nylon and polyester). There’s currently no reliable way to recycle fabrics at scale, so organizations around the world are trying to come up with solutions. In Hong Kong, for instance, the government developed the Green Machine, which shreds clothing into tiny fibers, separates different materials, then spins them back into yarn. Other companies, like Evrnu, Circ, and Sulzer, use chemicals to dissolve fabric into polymers, then transform them back into fibers.

Over the past decade, Renewcell has been working on a process to transform old clothes into new clothes. It buys used garments and textile production waste that contains a large proportion of cotton and viscose; jeans are a good candidate, because many are made largely from cotton with a small quantity of stretchy fibers like nylon. A machine removes buttons and zippers, then remaining textiles are shredded and chemically dissolved. Any contaminants and noncellulosic content (like nylon) is separated out. What’s left is pure cellulose. This new material, which Renewcell calls Circulose, is packaged into bales and can then go through the apparel manufacturing supply chain as a replacement for cotton, viscose, or synthetic fibers.

In 2020 and 2021, Dillinger’s team launched small capsule collections of jeans made with Circulose, including the 502 for men and High Loose for women. “We were able to prove that Circulose was strong and durable enough to meet our denim standards,” Dillinger says. “But the big question was whether we could start using this material at scale.”

Dillinger and his team decided to launch a version of the 501 for men and women made with Circulose, placing an order of tens of thousands of units. The jeans are currently made with a blend of Circulose and organic cotton, but as the new plant in Sundsvall is able to produce larger quantities of Circulose, Dillinger says that they will use more of the fiber in the jeans.

Levi’s has carefully tweaked the design of these 501s to make them easy to recycle using Renewcell’s process. For instance, the company has made the entire jean from cotton and viscose. This meant replacing pieces of the garment usually made from synthetic fibers—like labels, polyester pockets, and other details—with cotton alternatives. “The benefit of Renewcell’s chemical recycling process is that fabrics can be recycled infinitely without degrading the fibers,” Dillinger says.

Dillinger says these 501s are arguably the most sustainable jeans the company has made, allowing Levi’s to reduce its dependence on raw materials and making a big step toward creating a circular system, where its garments can be transformed back into clothes. But Dillinger also says that Renewcell isn’t the only sustainable technology he’s excited about. “There are lots of companies out there working on very exciting solutions,” he says. “We’re betting on many of them. As an industry, we’re not going to make strides unless everybody is innovating.”