German fashion brand Charle Berlin and Austria-based fiber producer Lenzing have unveiled a new line of fully compostable textile tapes made without plastic. These innovative elastics combine Tencel Lyocell, Tencel Luxe filament yarn, and natural rubber to create sustainable alternatives to conventional elastane-based tapes.
The collection also includes non-elastic variants crafted entirely from Tencel Lyocell. The new products were officially introduced this week at the Future Fabrics Expo in London.
Nicole Shram, Business Development Manager at Lenzing, explained the motivation behind the project: “We were looking for a way to avoid elastane and create compostable options. It works across so many applications—fashion, underwear, and even footwear—with different thicknesses and levels of stretch.”
Charle Berlin, founded in 2010 by Mandy Geddert initially as a children’s fashion label, developed its first natural rubber elastic band in 2011 using rubber sourced from Malaysia. Since then, the company has expanded to supply sustainable elastics to other brands.
The product development collaboration between Charle Berlin and Lenzing took about a year, and the tapes are now commercially available.
“There are so many brands asking whether we have options for circularity,” Shram added. “Options like this which have an end-of-life solution are attractive.”
