Aside from dyes and/or finishes, cotton textile waste is essentially pure cellulose that can be hydrolyzed into glucose. Glucose is a bio-based building block that can be utilized in many applications to produce value added products, including without a doubt, most notably, ethanol. As more interest and concern is expressed regarding the circularity of products, the ability to show economical and socially responsible pathways for cotton textile products post waste becomes more important. For the last several years, Cotton Incorporated has researched and pursued the concept of converting cotton textile waste into glucose with these pathways in mind. The results of these efforts have yielded two approaches to pretreat and enzymatically hydrolyze cotton textiles. One process relies on a novel one pot, low concentration chemical pretreatment and subsequent hydrolysis. A second process relies on a highly efficient mechanical pretreatment approach and successive hydrolysis. Additionally, proven methodologies have been developed to address the challenges found with cotton textile waste such as different colors and resultant impacts on hydrolysis efficiencies. Work is currently underway to scale these processes and methodologies and provide the resultant glucose to research collaborators producing new glucose-based products. These endeavors show how cotton is well situated as a natural fiber with the ability to be repurposed into glucose as a source for bio-based products.