Production of ethanol from cotton linter and waste blue jeans textiles was investigated and the results were compared with Avicel and glucose as reference materials. The textiles were untreated or treated either with 12% NaOH at 0 _C for 3 h or with concentrated phosphoric acid. The materials were first hydrolyzed at 45 _C by the enzymes for 24 h followed by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) by S. cerevisiae for 4 days. The most important results are summarized in Fig. 1. As the reference material, the yields of ethanol from glucose after 24 to 96 h cultivations were 0.42 and 0.44 g/g, which was 83% and 86% of the theoretical yield, respectively. The SSF of untreated Avicel resulted in 35% and 55% of the theoretical yield of ethanol in one and four days, respectively (Fig. 1a). The results show significant improvement in ethanol production from the cotton and jeans by the alkali pretreatment. While the SSF of untreated jeans and cotton resulted in 25–26% of the theoretical ethanol yield within 4 days (Fig. 1a), the alkali treatment resulted in 85–86% of the theoretical yield which is the same as the yield from glucose (Fig. 1b). This means that we produced 0.48 g ethanol from each gram of the pretreated waste textiles. Furthermore, the hydrolysis of the material was quite successful, so that with just 24 h SSF the yield of ethanol from the treated textiles was 92% of the corresponding yield from glucose. The pretreatment of the textiles by phosphoric acid was not as effective as the alkali pretreatment. The acid-pretreated cotton and jeans resulted in 44–46% of the theoretical ethanol yield after one day and 65–66% after 4 days of SSF (Fig. 1b). However, this is still 130–160% improvement compared to the untreated textiles.