The shirt that comes back.

What happens to most clothing

The path most clothing takes is short: cotton field → factory → shop → wardrobe → bin. Then truck, then landfill or incinerator. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation describes it as “one garbage truck of textiles every second” — a figure that hasn’t budged in the years since they coined it.

The 2024 numbers, from the Foundation’s most recent impact report:

• 92 million tonnes of textile waste generated each year, projected to hit 134 million tonnes by 2030
• 73% ends up in landfill or incinerated
• Less than 1% of clothing is recycled back into new clothing
• $500 billion of value is lost annually to the linear system

Recycling rates are low for a specific reason. Most “textile recycling” actually means downcycling — turning old clothing into insulation, rags, or stuffing. The original fibre never sees another shirt. Once the loop opens, it doesn’t close.

Closing it is the hard part. That’s what Remill does.

Sort, shred, blend, respin

Every shirt we sell has a small QR code printed inside the wash-care label. When you’re done with the shirt — torn, faded, beyond repair — you scan that code. A page opens on your phone. It generates a free returns label. You print it, tape it to the shirt, drop it in the post.

At the factory in India, the returned garment goes through four steps:

1. Sort — by colour and fibre composition (Remill takes only 100% cotton; denim and underwear are excluded because of fibre blends and elastic content).
2. Shred — mechanical recycling tears the fabric back into raw fibre. No chemicals.
3. Blend — the recovered fibre is mixed roughly 50/50 with fresh GOTS-certified organic cotton.
4. Respin — the blend is carded, spun into yarn, knitted into jersey, and cut into a new garment.

The new shirt carries the old one inside it. Then the loop restarts.

The fibre-length problem

The reason recycled cotton needs to be blended with fresh cotton is mechanical. Virgin cotton fibres are 20–25 mm long. After mechanical shredding, they drop to roughly 15 mm — short enough that they can’t hold together as yarn on their own.

So we blend. About half the fibre in each Remill shirt is recovered from previous lives; the other half is fresh organic cotton, which provides the structural length to make the yarn strong enough to weave.

Research published in the Journal of Cleaner Production and the Sustainability journal confirms that blends of up to 75% recycled fibre can be spun without significant loss of yarn strength. We sit comfortably under that ceiling, at 50%, because the longer fresh fibres give the finished shirt the hand-feel and durability that customers actually want.

The blend isn’t a compromise. It’s the technical reality of doing this well.

Not just our shirts

In 2023 Teemill opened Remill to any brand’s 100% cotton clothing. You don’t need to have bought from us to participate. The shirt at the back of your drawer from a holiday in 2017 — the kids’ shirt that no longer fits — the promotional tee from a half marathon — all welcome. All become someone’s next shirt.

The exclusions are technical, not arbitrary:

• Denim is excluded because the indigo dye and the chemical finishes used on denim weaves complicate the shredding process.
• Underwear and socks typically contain elastane or polyester, which mechanical recycling can’t separate out.
• Blends (cotton/polyester mixes) can’t be recovered as pure cotton on the other side of the loop.

If a garment is 100% cotton, Teemill will take it. You get store credit toward your next purchase — a small but real incentive that makes the postage actually worth doing.