The Lycra Company is now producing a spandex fiber with 70 percent plant-based content at commercial scale, using U.S.-grown dent corn as feedstock, and will present the material at the Textile Exchange Conference running October 12–16 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

The corn comes largely from Iowa and replaces a significant portion of the petroleum-derived inputs conventionally used to make spandex, Lycra said in a statement. A third-party-reviewed life cycle assessment found the fiber can cut its carbon footprint by up to 45 percent while delivering equivalent stretch and recovery performance — a claim mills and brands can now trace to an LCA when qualifying the fiber for sustainability programmes.

"Bringing more recycled and renewable materials to commercial scale is essential to turning the industry's ambitions into action," said Alistair Williamson, the company's 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."

Who has already adopted the fiber?

Commercial uptake is no longer theoretical. In December last year, Italian swimwear brand Arena released a collection of swimsuits made with recycled nylon and Renewable Lycra Fiber — the material's first commercial adoption. Danish brand Only & Sons followed with jeans containing the renewable fiber.

In September, during Climate Week in New York, Lycra and partners launched a plant-based denim collection built on the feedstock. The collaboration pooled:

• Avalo, an AI-powered crop innovation company supplying low-footprint cotton that generates half the emissions of conventionally grown cotton;
• Pakistani denim mill Neela by Sapphire Fibers Ltd.;
• Italian textile chemistry provider Soko;
• The Lycra Company's renewable fiber.

Where does spandex recycling stand?

Alongside the renewable fiber, Lycra has spent the last few years working with textile recyclers worldwide to separate spandex from companion yarns such as nylon and polyester in pre-consumer textile waste, then spin it back into new spandex fibers. The result is a pilot-stage spandex recycling system, which the company describes as an important step toward textile circularity. The next step is scaling the infrastructure to produce Lycra fiber with recycled content.

"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 said.

At the Vancouver conference, Lycra said it will highlight work with partners across the value chain spanning renewable fiber solutions, circular innovation and strategic industry partnerships.

For sourcing teams, the announcement shifts Renewable Lycra Fiber from pilot-stage sustainability messaging to a commercial-scale option with brand references and an LCA behind it. Buyers setting plant-based content or carbon-reduction targets in stretch garments — swimwear, denim, activewear — now have a qualified supplier to evaluate, while recycled-content spandex remains a pipeline item to monitor rather than a bulk option.