The Lycra Company, a global leader in fiber and technology solutions for the apparel and personal care industries, said it will showcase a renewable fiber made from field corn at the upcoming Textile Exchange Conference later this month.
The Renewable Lycra Fiber is made with 70 percent plant-based content using U.S.-grown dent corn, popularly known as field corn, as a key feedstock and is now being produced at a commercial scale.
The corn is sourced largely from Iowa, replacing a significant portion of the petroleum-derived inputs traditionally used to make spandex, Lycra said in a recent statement.
A third-party-reviewed life cycle assessment showed this particular fiber can reduce its carbon footprint by up to 45 percent while maintaining equivalent stretch and recovery performance.
“Bringing more recycled and renewable materials to commercial scale is essential to turning the industry’s ambitions into action,” said Alistair Williamson, company vice president of product sustainability. “At Textile Exchange, we’ll feature how Renewable Lycra Fiber is making that progress possible today, while delivering the stretch, fit and comfort consumers expect.”
At the conference, Lycra said it will highlight its work with partners across the value chain, helping to shape the future for textiles through renewable fiber solutions, circular innovation, and strategic industry partnerships. The conference takes place October 12 to 16, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada.
Over the last few years, Lycra said it has been working with textile recyclers worldwide to build and refine systems that separate spandex from companion yarns, such as nylon and polyester, from pre-consumer textile waste, and spin it back into new spandex fibers.
The result is a pilot-stage spandex recycling system and an important step toward textile circularity. The next step is scaling up the infrastructure to produce Lycra fiber made with recycled content, Lycra said.
“Creating commercially viable textile-to-textile recycling systems requires collaboration, and we are helping advance technologies designed to recover and reclaim spandex from end-of-life textiles,” Williamson added.
This marks Lycra’s latest push to bring its renewable fiber front and center for the industry to see. In December of last year, the material saw its first commercial adoption in swimwear, thanks to an Italian swimwear brand named Arena. The brand released a collection of swimsuits made with recycled nylon and Renewable Lycra Fiber.
It was also adopted by other brands, including Danish brand Only & Sons which launched jeans made with Lyrcra’s renewable fiber.
One key way to raise awareness for a new product is to demonstrate how good it is, as opposed to just talking about it. During Climate Week in New York this September, Lycra and its other partners did just that by launching a plant-based denim collection with a low carbon footprint.
The denim collection was a collaborative work, bringing the expertise and technologies of the Lycra Company, AI-powered crop innovation company Avalo, Pakistani denim mill Neela by Sapphire Fibers Ltd. and Italian textile chemistry provider Soko. Its fabric was made up of a blend of Avalo’s low-footprint cotton, which only creates half the emissions of a conventionally grown cotton, and Lyrcra’s renewable fiber.