End of life — The challenge of recycling.
Overproduction and consumption of clothing has led to a dramatic increase in textile waste. Globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste is created each year. This translates to the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ending up in a landfill every second. And this is only projected to get worse. By 2030, we are expected to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year.
Today, less than 1% of clothing that is sent to be recycled is actually turned into new clothing — a process known as “material to material” recycling. With most recycled polyester being used by leading fashion brands today coming from bottles rather than old clothing.
So, what are the main challenges when it comes to textile recycling?
There are 2 ways we can recycle textiles. Mechanical and chemical recycling.
Mechanical fibre recycling entails shredding clothes into small pieces to create new fibre. The challenge of this practice is that the process weakens and shortens the fibre, so the recycled part still needs to be blended with a high proportion of virgin fibre.
Moreover, not all textiles are suitable for mechanical recycling. Clothes made from a mix of fibres are generally difficult to recycle to a high value. Once fibres like polyester and cotton have been blended into a fabric, today’s methods for recycling are unable to separate them. Given that over 35% of all textiles are made up of polyester cotton blends, this represents a huge barrier for clothing recycling. New approaches are needed. Today, the majority of clothes that are mechanically recycled are actually “down-cycled”. Downcycling is the process of turning textile waste into something of lower value as wiping cloths, carpet padding, and sound or thermal insulation for other industries. This keeps textiles out of the landfill for a while, but eventually, these materials will end up there, making down-cycling a last resort solution.
At Sheep Inc. we are constantly testing new methods to be able to incorporate recycled wool into our yarns. We are currently experimenting with combining virgin and pre-consumer wool waste into a yarn blend, using factory offshoot yarn. With our yarn mill, we use a mechanical recycling process to shred the wool, mix it with a virgin wool and spin it into new yarn. There are however limitations to its effective use. Manufacturing sweaters made with a recycled wool blend compromises one of the most important pillars for our brand: durability. We believe in knitwear designed to last for life and unfortunately the recycled sample knits degrade a lot quicker. In addition, excessive pilling is also currently a by-product of recycled wool. This means that garments would risk being discarded after a short wear-life. Contributing to further waste issues. Nevertheless, we are trialling new processes to improve performance, as continuing to minimise impact lies at the core of our ethos.
The second way textiles can be recycled is through a chemical recycling process that, as the name indicates, entails materials going through a chemical process to produce new yarn. The technology has the potential to recapture raw materials from end-of-use textiles and restore them back to virgin equivalent raw materials. This means the recycled fibres can be spun into new yarn and go back into the supply chain as new. Theoretically, with chemical recycling materials can be produced that are comparable in quality to their virgin counterparts — making responsible textile sourcing in circular economy dynamics possible. However, the sustainability challenge of this method is hard to ignore. It relies on the heavy use of chemical substances and has a huge footprint in terms of CO2 emissions. Research is being carried out in this space to reuse chemicals to maximise their usability in a closed loop system before being discarded.
The challenge of textile recycling is attracting big investment groups, with H&M and The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel leading the way in the research. City University of Hong Kong is also working on scaling a new innovation in mixed fibre recycling. They have developed a technique that successfully separates cotton from polyester by feeding them to fungi. The fungi produces an enzyme that can break down the cotton into glucose. The remaining pure polyester fibres can then be reused to make new clothing.
These technologies will enable the industry to go from a linear model of production to a circular model, where existing clothing can provide the raw material to make new clothing, indefinitely. And at Sheep Inc. we will continue to push our own manufacturing processes to make sure we continue to be at the forefront of innovation.
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