Recycled Polyester Saved This American Factory. Environmentalists Hate It

In the bottle processing plant in Reidsville, North Carolina, drifts of plastic particles, like snow banks, are piled in every nook of the machinery that chops the bottles into flake. When I ask our tour guide, a floor manager, if he worries about breathing it in, he says he doesn’t. “We do a good job of cleaning it up,” he says, adding that the bags of dust that are vacuumed up are sold off, and the wastewater is filtered.

But I’m concerned. A 2023 study of a UK plastics recycling plant found that even after the installation of state-of-the-art filters, around 6 percent of the plastic being processed was released into the wastewater as micro and nanoplastic, while the air around the facility was full of microplastics small enough to be hazardous to human health.

Scientists are still puzzling out what microplastics do to our health, but one study found that people with IBS tended to have more microplastics, including PET and polyamide (of which nylon is one type), in their gut. While PET seems to be one of the most benign out of all the plastics, at least two studies have found BPA, a hormone-disrupting chemical, in polyester baby clothing, and a number of brands agreed to a settlement with California lawmakers in 2023 over the presence of BPA in polyester athletic shirts.

In addition, water utility managers in Reidsville have alleged that Unifi and other polyester manufacturers could be potentially be sources of 1,4-dioxane, a probable human carcinogen, in the Cape Fear watershed, which provides drinking water for over 1 million people as it flows from central to southeast North Carolina. Technically, that’s not illegal (especially since Unifi, along with other industrial sources and several towns, successfully lobbied against a North Carolina rule limiting 1,4-dioxane in wastewater). Because 1,4-dioxane is a byproduct of manufacturing PET resin, the EPA declared in late 2024 that almost any exposure to 1,4-dioxane constitutes an unreasonable risk to the health of polyester workers and surrounding communities. There are (very costly) ways to treat wastewater for 1,4-dioxane, so how ensuing regulations would affect Unifi remains to be seen, especially since the EPA doesn’t currently seem keen to do any regulating of toxic chemical exposure.

Ingle and Boyd both declined to speak in detail about these issues. In person, they cited the advice of Unifi’s counsel (BPA), said Unifi follows all regulations (1,4-dioxane), or pled ignorance (microplastics). Follow-up questions to Boyd went unanswered. Ingle responded to follow-up questions via email by writing, “We maintain active participation in The Microfibre Consortium, in order to support academic and industry research into the source and impact of fiber fragmentation from textiles into the natural environment.” And “We are compliant with all local, state, and federal regulations for all of our sites.”

To advocates, each micro-scandal is proof that there is no environmentally friendly polyester. “We can’t do this sustainably in a nontoxic way, it’s literally impossible,” Pecci says.

But I left the Repreve plant wondering if we’re letting perfect be the enemy of good American jobs. Polyester will continue to be in demand, and it will either be made here in a compliant factory using recycled sources, or abroad in a sketchy factory using fresh petrochemicals. Pecci says she doesn’t want to “call out that company or those people, because they might be the nicest people in the world doing the best they can with what they have.” She described for me a utopia in which nontoxic and natural clothing is all made here and then composted and recycled here. Sounds gorgeous, and impossible.

In February of this year, Unifi announced it was closing its Madison, North Carolina, polyester processing plant. It would ship some of its machinery to its Latin American plants, and offer the Madison employees new job opportunities at the Yadkinsville and Reidsville plants, which remain in service.

For now, anyway.