The textile and apparel industry alone is responsible for a major share of waste every year, approximating 92 tons as per UNEP (UN Environment Programme). With the European Union’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) mandate, it is now necessary for manufacturers and retailers to tag each and every trade item with RFID, offering a unique ID to each article, similar to EAN.
E-thread, a smart yarn embedded with the RAIN RFID Chip by Impinj, the Impinj M730 RFID chip, is a revolutionary solution that can essentially help with establishing a balance between sustainability and textile waste.
Why is an RFID yarn needed at all, you might ask? Well, traditional labels or barcodes fade, fall off, or are removed; once the textile enters the waste/reuse stream, identity is lost, making sorting for recycling inefficient. With embedded RFID yarn, each garment or linen piece retains its identity until the end of its life. A reading system can identify what the item is, what materials/composition it is made of, how many cycles it has, and direct it to the correct recycling stream. It ensures higher value recycling (less contamination, better sorting), reduction in landfill/incineration, and aligns with circular economy goals, which have become the need of the hour for our planet.
RFID E-thread bridges the gap between operational efficiency (inventory, logistics, sorting) and sustainability/regulatory demands (e.g., the Digital Product Passport or DPP in Europe).
In this blog post, we will understand:
- a. What is RFID E-Thread?
- b. How to use E-thread? And how can it streamline operations for linen/textile manufacturers, rental, and retail services?
- c. How does RFID Yarn support recycling, the circular economy, and DPP compliance?
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1. What is E-Thread?
E-Thread is essentially a yarn-shaped filament with an embedded UHF RFID chip and antenna, which can be woven or sewn into textiles during manufacture. The E-thread, a trademarked product by Primo1D, uses the M730 RFID chip by Impinj and offers a read range of 12 meters.
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1. The antenna and chip are integrated into the thread so that it becomes part of the textile fabric rather than a label stuck on.
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2. It is designed to withstand harsh textile processing: washing, industrial laundering, drying, mechanical stress, and maintain readability.
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3. Since the RFID is woven in (nearly invisible), thieves or counterfeiters cannot easily find or remove a tag.
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4. Because the ID is embedded and lives in the product's lifetime, it supports downstream activities like sorting for recycling.
2. How RFID Yarn is Used: Implementation Across the Value Chain
E-thread, an RFID Yarn, is designed to survive many laundry/industrial wash cycles (100+ cycles) and remain functional. It is used by textile firms and apparel manufacturers, retailers, and the hospitality sector, retailers, etc.
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Let’s understand how various firms can use this RFID yarn for better operational control:
a. Manufacturer/fabric mill
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a. At the fabric production or weaving stage, the E-Thread yarn is integrated into the linen fabric (bath/table linen, napkins, etc.) or sewn into finished items. Because it’s a thread, it becomes part of the structure, not an add-on.
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b. During production and finishing (dyeing, washing, finishing), the RFID must survive the harsh conditions; E-Thread is rated for that.
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c. The item is given a unique EPC (Electronic Product Code) via the RFID chip, which links the physical item to its digital identity (metadata: fabric type, origin, batch, composition, etc.).
b. Logistics & inventory
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a. Items can be tracked in bulk: for example, when linens arrive at the rental laundry or hotel laundry facility, a portal or RFID conveyor tunnel system with a UHF reader can be used to scan all items at once, sans line of sight.
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b. Inventory accuracy becomes much higher; you know exactly which items are on which pallets, in which bags, how many garments, etc., reducing losses, miscounts, and wrong allocations.
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c. For retail or rental linen, the read speed and automation reduce manual scanning time dramatically, removing barcodes or visual checks.
c. Rental Services
For rental services (hotels, hospitals, spas), each linen item (sheet, duvet cover, towel, etc.) can be identified throughout its life: from rental cycle to laundry, to return, to reuse. Because the tag can’t be easily removed, and the identity is persistent, missing items can be tracked, and replacements managed.
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d. Retail Sector
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a. Retail brands can treat linens (or textile products) as individual, traceable items; stock counting becomes faster; shrinkage (theft or loss) can be reduced; customer self-checkout becomes more feasible.
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b. UHF RFID enables rapid stock‐take, shelf replenishment, and fewer out-of-stock/inventory mismatches.
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c. Authenticity & anti-counterfeiting
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d. With a digital identity, the second-hand market becomes more trustworthy.
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e. The product’s digital passport can link to consumer apps (care instructions, origin story, sustainability), enhancing brand experience.
3. How RFID Yarn Supports Recycling, Circular Economy, and DPP Compliance?
In the European context, the Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulation requires granular product data across the lifecycle, including material composition, recyclability, and origin. The embedded RFID chip gives a persistent “digital handle” to each physical item and its data.
When the item reaches end-of-life, the embedded RFID thread still exists. A sorting facility with RFID readers can identify the item (its composition, origin, batch, material types) automatically, enabling more efficient recycling streams.
The technology is not region-locked as the UHF RFID infrastructure is global (though frequency regulations differ), and consistent item-level tracking globally gives benefits in centralised logistics, returns management, and global recycling programmes. However, in some geographies with low labour costs, the ROI must be carefully demonstrated. But still, the savings in manual effort, loss reduction, and recycling value hold.
To summarize, the embedded RFID yarn solution, like E-Thread, offers a strong bridge between operational efficiency and sustainability requirements in the textile/linen world, given a high amount of waste creation and the need for sustained recycling and reuse.
For manufacturers, rental-linen services, hospitality, retailers, and recyclers, especially in Europe but also globally, RFID E-Thread provides a way to:
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1. Improve inventory accuracy, reduce loss, streamline logistics
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2. Enable new business models (rental, resale, take-back)
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3. Meet regulatory and consumer demands for traceability and circularity (via DPP)
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4. Automate sorting, extend lifecycle, boost recycling value
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