Fibre encyclopedia
Recycled cotton
Also called recycled cotton · katun daur ulang · post-consumer cotton · cotton regenerated
Cotton shredded back out of cloth and spun again. The fibre is shorter than new cotton, so it is nearly always spun with something else.
Class
Natural
Comes from
From a plant
Where it comes from
Two streams feed this. Offcuts from garment factories, which are clean, sorted by colour and never worn; and clothing that has been worn, which arrives mixed. Both are shredded back into loose fibre.
How it feels to wear
Air
Air moves through the fibre easily
Water
Takes water into the fibre
Heat
Neither holds nor sheds heat
Stretch
No stretch of its own
Wear
Depends on how it was spun
Shredding breaks the fibre, so recycled cotton is shorter and harder to spin on its own. It is nearly always spun with new cotton or with polyester so the yarn holds together, and that share decides how the cloth behaves. Some spinners sort waste cloth by colour so it does not have to be dyed again, which is why recycled cotton sometimes arrives in a colour nobody chose for it.
Care
- Wash cold.
- Short fibre works loose at the surface, so wash inside out to slow it down.
- Dry in shade.
Care follows the cotton it was blended with, and the blend is what the label states.
End of life
Recycling route
Mechanical recycling
Mechanical recycling of cotton runs today mostly on factory offcuts, because they arrive clean and sorted. Worn clothing arrives mixed with other fibres, and sorting it is the step that decides whether it can enter the route at all.
In a blend
Cloth that has been shredded once can be shredded again, and the fibre is shorter each time.
Skin notes
Mechanical
The fibre is cotton, at a shorter length. Short fibre ends stand up at the surface more often, which is felt as a rougher hand.
Chemical
Cloth that is not re-dyed carries the dye and finish of whatever it was before, and none of that is declared anywhere.
If your skin reacts to a garment, a dermatologist and patch testing are what can answer it. A label cannot, and neither can this page.
What the label cannot tell you
The label gives a percentage. It does not say whether the fibre came from factory offcuts or from worn clothing, whether it was re-dyed, or who checked the figure.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and related labelling, Annex I. Checked 22 August 2026
- European Commission Joint Research Centre, techno-scientific assessment of the management options for used and waste textiles in the European Union, 2023
Written from primary sources and in our own words. Where a figure could not be traced to a source anyone can open, it is not printed here.
Read the label you are holding
The scan surface reads one care label and names which questions it answers and which it leaves out. A passport says for one specific piece what a label cannot: the composition with its percentages, where the cloth came from, who worked on it, how to repair it and where it goes next.