Recently, the Australian plastics recycling technology firm Samsara Eco and sportswear brand Lululemon announced the establishment of a partnership to recycle nylon 66 and polyester fibers from clothing waste, creating the world's first "infinitely" recycled nylon and polyester fibers. And the clothing waste will extend from high-performance textiles to general ones. 

Image: Samsara Eco 

In the past, domestic yoga clothes were mainly based on a combination of polyester and spandex. Although fabrics with high polyester content are soft, light and affordable, they display poor breathability. In contrast, featuring low price-performance ratio, those with low polyester content perform well in nearly all aspects. Later, as lululemon entered the Chinese market  in 2016, which set a fashion for athleisure, consumers began to make increasingly high demands on moisture absorption, breathability and elasticity of yoga clothes. Owing to its innovative fabrics, which are based on nylon 66 and high-quality yarns (such as Loon, Luxtreme, Nulu, Everlux, etc.), lululemon as a brand gained traction among the consumers. In the mainland Chinese market, Lululemon's three-year compound growth rate of  is close to , China has become lululemon’s third largest market after the United States and Canada, where the company’s revenue registered a CAGR of approximately 70% for the 2020-2022 period. 

As the advantages of nylon 66, including wear resistance, heat resistance and excellent elasticity, have been recognized by consumers,  many other yoga clothing brands are also turning to it, resulting in rapidly growing nylon 6,6 demand. At the same time, the production capacity for adiponitrile and nylon 66 are also expanding as China’s first industrial adiponitrile project using butadiene process came online, a part of  Tianchen Qixiang’s Phase I adiponitrile and new materials project. Presently, adiponitrile projects under construction and proposed have a total capacity of over 4 million tonnes per year. And nylon 6,6 projects of such kind have a combined capacity of more than 5 million tonnes per year. Thus it is expected that nylon 66 will see rapid expansion of its application in the textile and apparel sector, indicating a bright prospect for the industry.