Project Chrysalis

From Container to Textile

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This project is now archived and was part of DDW21

This project is part of
Rethinking Plastic

Project Chrysalis: from container to textile

Bente Snijkers

Jessica den Hartog and Michelle Baggerman collaborate with the Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM) in their investigation into processing post consumer plastic (HDPE) into sustainable recycled yarns.

What is a chrysalis?

An age old way of making textiles is by unwinding the cocoons of silkworms and spinning the filaments into yarns. Not all caterpillars make cocoons out of filaments. Some make a hard shell when they pupate, called a chrysalis. Plastic packaging material could be seen as artificial cocoons, which are harvested in this project to be transformed into yarn and textile.

Project Description

In the Netherlands only 59% of the 25kg of plastic waste generated p.p.p.y. is recycled. Plastics like PET and PP are increasingly recycled for high-grade applications but HDPE is mostly down-cycled. Project Chrysalis develops recycled monofilament yarns for closed-loop textile products out of HDPE sourced from household waste. Post-consumer HDPE mostly comes from packaging and can have any color. This color mix results in grey pellets after processing at the recycling plant. We aim to increase the potential application of grey post-consumer HDPE by developing both its functional and aesthetic qualities in textile yarn. We want to show its potential through the design of inspiring product samples. The Chrysalis yarn is being developed to work on industrial knitting machines and may be used for applications ranging from nets to spacers. At DDW we present the first results of this ongoing research.