Just when you thought you’ve seen everything there is to see about upcycling, recycling, and otherwise managing the mountain of waste generated by modern society, on November 30 DrFlora post a great article about upcycling men’s cotton shirts to make spectacular quilts. Take a look, they are fabulous!
As for the collars, cuffs, and other scraps left behind, the cotton recycling industry is adopting DNA tracking and other next-generation systems that help shepherd more cotton textiles into the circular economy of the sparkling green future. The challenge is what to do with the torrent of synthetic and blended textiles that enters the waste stream every day.
Researchers at Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania are among those tackling the challenge. “Recycling synthetic clothing is particularly difficult due to the additives used in production, which complicate sorting and processing. Microplastics are also released during washing or treatment,” they explain.
“Because most garments consist of fibre blends, incineration and landfilling remain the most common disposal methods – yet direct incineration increases CO₂ emissions and environmental pollution,” they add.
The researchers initially proposed re-using polyester fiber from discarded clothing as a cement additive. They demonstrated that that cement composed of just 1.5% of textile-derived polyester fibers is 15–20% stronger than conventional cement. The polyester-infused cement also outperformed its conventional counterparts on freeze–thaw resistance.
More recently, the KTU team also developed an alternative method aimed at recycling blended textiles without going through expensive separation steps. Instead, they used the ash from incinerated textiles as a cement additive. Since the composition of textiles varies widely, so does the nature of the ash, but generally the researchers demonstrated that textile ash can replace a fairly significant proportion of conventional cement materials, at up to 7.5%, while improving the compressive strength of the material by 16%.
Back when the US Environmental Protection Agency was tasked with protecting the environment, a group of EPA staffers got together and assembled a fact sheet on textile re-purposing and recycling. You can see it here, until it evaporates.
