rPET stands for recycled polyethylene terephthalate — polyester fibre made from recycled feedstock instead of new petroleum. The most common source is post-consumer PET bottles, which are washed, shredded into flake, melted and re-extruded as filament yarn suitable for knitting jerseys, mesh, tricot and interlock.

Does rPET perform like virgin polyester?

For mid-weight sportswear (140–220 GSM) the performance is broadly equivalent — tensile strength, wash-fastness, wicking and sublimation all match virgin polyester within a few percent. Extremely fine deniers (below 50D) are harder to spin from recycled feedstock because contamination shows up as filament breakage. For standard 75D and 100D jersey yarns rPET performs at spec.

What certification proves recycled content?

Two main systems: Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certifies minimum 50% recycled content plus social, environmental and chemical criteria. Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) is a simpler chain-of-custody audit for recycled content only. Buyer specifies which. Both require transaction certificates at every supply-chain step from bottle collector to final garment.

How much more does rPET cost?

Typically 8–15% more at the yarn stage than virgin polyester, translating to roughly 3–8% at the finished-garment level once cutting, sewing and decoration costs are factored in. Certification transaction fees and the audit trail add a small additional overhead. Cost is dropping year-on-year as recycling capacity scales.

Can rPET be sublimated?

Yes — sublimation on rPET works identically to virgin polyester because the dye bonds to the same PET polymer chemistry. Colour saturation and wash-fastness are equivalent. The only caveat is that rPET base white can carry a very slight grey cast from residual contamination, which shifts perceived light Pantone colours by half a shade. Ask for a strike-off before locking colour approval.

Fabrics · Sportswear Encyclopedia

Recycled Polyester (rPET), Explained

Post-consumer bottles turned into jersey yarn. The chemistry is real, the performance holds up, and the cost delta is small. Here is how rPET actually moves from waste stream to finished kit — and how to make the sustainability claim stick with a proper audit trail.

Feedstock

PET bottles

Post-consumer

Certification

GRS / RCS

Chain-of-custody

Performance

Parity

Vs virgin PES

Cost delta

+3–8%

Finished garment

From bottle to jersey — the physical chain

Collection — post-consumer PET bottles gathered from municipal recycling or dedicated take-back programmes.
Sorting and washing — bottles sorted by resin type (only PET/#1 is usable), caps and labels removed, contents rinsed.
Flaking — bottles shredded into flake, typically 6–12 mm chips.
Purification — hot caustic wash removes glue and label residue; a hydrocyclone separates PET (sinks) from PP caps (float).
Repelletising — flake is melted and extruded into new PET pellets suitable for filament spinning.
Filament spinning — pellets are melted, forced through a spinneret, drawn and texturised into filament yarn identical in geometry to virgin PES.
Knitting and finishing — yarn goes to the mill and is knit into interlock, mesh, tricot or fleece exactly as a virgin polyester run.

Mechanical vs chemical recycling

Mechanical — the process above. Cheap, mature, dominant. Downside: quality degrades slightly with each recycling cycle, and contamination limits the number of times PET can be recycled before the yarn is unsuitable for fine textiles.
Chemical (glycolysis / methanolysis) — PET is depolymerised back to monomers (MEG and TPA), then repolymerised. Output is molecularly identical to virgin PET, can recycle infinitely, accepts mixed-colour and contaminated feedstock. Downside: expensive, still scaling, adds roughly 15–25% cost vs mechanical rPET.

For sportswear, mechanical rPET dominates 90%+ of the volume. Chemical rPET is showing up in premium and outerwear programmes where infinite recyclability is part of the brand story.

GRS, RCS — what actually proves recycled content

Standard	Scope	Best for
GRS (Global Recycled Standard)	≥ 50% recycled + social, environmental and chemical criteria	Retail brands making public sustainability claims
RCS (Recycled Claim Standard)	Chain-of-custody for recycled content only	Simpler audit trail, still lets you claim recycled %
SCS Recycled Content	Third-party verified recycled %	North-American retail claims

The audit trail is a chain of Transaction Certificates (TCs): bottle collector → flake processor → pellet plant → yarn spinner → knitting mill → garment factory. Every step needs its own certificate. If one link is missing, the finished garment cannot carry the claim.

Spec sheet — rPET interlock on a tech pack

Fabric: 100% recycled polyester interlock (GRS certified)
Recycled content: ≥ 65% by weight
Yarn: 75D/72F texturised rPET filament
Weight: 150 GSM ±5
Certification: GRS Scope Certificate + Transaction Certificate per shipment
Finish: Hydrophilic wicking, heat-set
Wash-fastness: ISO 105-C06 grade 4 min
Note: Colour approval from rPET strike-off, not virgin PES strike-off

Marketing claims — what's honest, what isn't

Honest: 'Made with X% recycled polyester (GRS certified)'. Precise, verifiable, defensible.
Weaker: 'Made from Y bottles'. Legal but hides that the recycled % may be low. Y ÷ garment weight ratios are marketing.
Avoid: 'Sustainable', 'eco-friendly', 'green' without a certified metric — increasingly flagged as greenwashing by regulators in the EU and UK.
Avoid: Claiming closed-loop recycling if the input is bottles (open-loop) rather than old textiles (closed-loop). Different chain.

Honest trade-offs

Base white shifts slightly grey vs virgin PES — light Pantone colours can look half a shade off. Always approve on rPET strike-off.
Very fine deniers (30–50D) have marginally higher filament breakage. Standard 75D+ is fine.
Chain-of-custody adds admin — a small overhead per PO for TC handling.
Recycled content ≠ recyclable. rPET garments still need textile-to-textile recycling infrastructure to loop again, which is nascent.
Microfibre shedding is unchanged — rPET is still polyester and still sheds microplastics in the wash. Not a solution to the microfibre problem.

Run your next kit on rPET

We can source GRS or RCS certified rPET interlock, mesh and tricot for your programme, with the full transaction certificate chain and a colour-matched strike-off before bulk. Ask for a swatch pack in your target GSM.

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