From Trash to Trendy: The New Cotton Project

New Cotton Project celebrates H&M, Adidas large-scale circular fashion launches

Old Clothes Are Becoming the Fashion of the Future

The New Cotton Project

Each year, millions of tonnes of textiles end up in landfill, creating mountains of waste that take centuries to decompose. This problem is made worse by fast fashion, where clothes are made quickly, cheaply, and often tossed aside just as fast.

That’s why the New Cotton Project was created—to prove that old clothes aren’t garbage, but a valuable resource. Using special regeneration technology, worn-out textiles were transformed into Infinna™, a new fiber that looks and feels just like fresh cotton.

“No single company can solve the circularity issue alone,” says Tanja Karila, CMO of Infinited Fiber Company. “The entire supply chain needs to evolve.”

And that’s exactly what happened! The project brought together big brands like H&M and Adidas, plus scientists, textile producers, and designers. Together, they created real products—from a stylish top and trousers to a Stella McCartney-designed Adidas tracksuit—all made with Infinna™ fiber.

When the project needed a woven garment, H&M jumped in and produced one in record time. This showed that even huge companies can innovate quickly when they put their minds to it.

“It was difficult to showcase the advantages of circularity using the existing methods,” Karila explains. That’s why the team tried out new ways to measure the benefits of recycling textiles, making sure their work showed real environmental impact.

Another big win was teamwork. “We didn’t know at the outset if all the consortium would pull their weight,” says Karila. “But their motivation was extraordinary. Every partner went above and beyond to deliver.”

New Cotton Project | Harnessing collaboration and cutting-edge technology to create circular fashion

The legacy of New Cotton is powerful. It proved that circular fashion—where waste becomes raw material—really works. “This can’t just be a charity project to collect material,” adds Karila. Instead, it showed the fashion industry that recycled textiles can be both stylish and profitable.

Its results are now helping guide European regulations on recycling and inspiring new projects, like Adidas’s T-REX project.

The fashion world is at a turning point. Fast fashion may have been all about speed and low prices, but New Cotton proves there’s another way: one where old clothes get a new life.

“Small is mighty,” Karila concludes. “When companies, big and small, come together, they can achieve the extraordinary.”

I think the New Cotton Project is awesome because it shows that teamwork and creativity can solve big problems. Instead of letting clothes pile up in landfills, this project turned them into something new and exciting. If more companies followed this example, fashion could be fun and sustainable at the same time.

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