“Fast fashion,” or cheap clothing made to emulate the latest trends seen on the walkway, is often criticized for its environmental impact. Besides the high consumption of water and carbon emissions (more than international flights and maritime shipping combined), these often shoddily produced items significantly contribute to 85% of all discarded textilesthat are not recycled.

Now, researchers at the Austrian Graz University of Technology have developed a new use for old, out-of-vogue clothes.

A team led by Thomas Harter from the Institute of Bioproducts and Paper Technology at TU Graz has created a way to recover fibers from discarded cotton-based textiles, which can be used to make paper for packaging materials.