The Chemical Engineer Podcast: Episode One

Untangling the textile industry w/Aida Rafat, CEO of DyeRecycle

The world has a textile waste problem. With around 92m t/y of textile waste produced globally, recycling infrastructure and innovation is rapidly being developed to address the many requirements needed to make fabric both recyclable and reusable. 

For the first episode of the The Chemical Engineer Podcast, Aniqah Majid speak to Aida Rafat, the CEO and co-founder of startup DyeRecycle, to help untangle this complex industry. 

"Think about your clothes and how different they are," Rafat says. "They're coloured and they're blended with other fibres, they're finished with so many different chemistries, making the polyester used in those clothes super challenging to recycle because of the complexity of how it got to that heterogeneous form." 

DyeRecycle is one of many disruptors looking to make fabrics simpler and more homogenous so that they can be recycled more efficiently. The company has developed a solvent technology that can remove dye from textiles, namely polyester, and put them back into the supply chain.  

Having developed and grown DyeRecycle over more than three years, Rafat discusses the importance of technologies like this for the future of textiles, and her experience leading the startup's scaleup journey. 

Listen to the full episode here: 

About The Chemical Engineer

The Chemical Engineer will discuss some of the biggest stories in industry with a variety of interesting experts and game-changers working in and around the chemical engineering profession.