If there's one thing that's typically always true about most of the people in the world, it is that they love to dress. With awareness regarding recycling and conserving the environment, the concept of green textile has become popular, consequently, today concept of textile recycling is gaining momentum. Many buyers and also designers do not shy away from using recycled textile raw material to create something fresh. The idea behind recycling textile waste is to make certain that the manufacturing process involved to create something new doesn't end in doing more harm than good to the world's well-being. Today, many people are aware that even when they are dressing to impress the world, they must ensure that their dressing doesn't impact the environment. The textile waste recycling ensures this.

The textile waste is mainly categorised as post-industrial textile waste and post-consumer textile waste. The post-industrial recycling is a common practice and has been there for years. The post-industrial waste includes the by-products from textile like fibres, trimmings left on the cutting room floor in apparel and other textile product manufacturing facilities. Recent years have witnessed a boom in post-consumer textile recycling, as there are several consumer recycling programmes in practice across the world. The post-consumer waste includes waste of fleece, flannel, corduroy, cotton, nylon, denim, wool, and linen, which have already been either used by the consumers. Such products are recycled into a product for the consumer market again.

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The textile waste material industries include shoddy manufacturers, who recycle or remanufacture wool; laundry and wiping rag producer, who manufacture recycled rags for cleaning purposes; sorted clothing, which involves used clothing; shredders, who destroy the waste and reproduce it via recycling; garnetters are involved in the garneting process, which includes the recovering of fibres from hard twisted waste, rags and fragments. Under this process the materials return to a fluffy fibrous condition so it can be reused in blends. The process of garnetting involves use of machines. The process includes: sorting used woollens, cutting out the labels in the garments, loading to chopper each stage of garneting involves use of finer-toothed mesh, followed by fibrous stage, removing the button, preparing fibre webs, spinning the yarn, preparing yarn for weaving and finishing the blankets.

 

The main benefits of using recycled raw materials intextile involve environmental conservation and reduced cost of production.Recycling cancels out involvement of any polluting and energy intensiveprocesses that are used to make textiles from virgin materials. The requirementof landfill space is reduced, as there is less amount of waste to go to landfills.Waste textiles can actually result in several problems like synthetic fibres donot decompose and then there are woollen garments that take time to decomposeand produce methane in the process, thus contributing to global warming. Theinvolvement of fresh resources is diminished, which in turn results in puttingless pressure on environment. Textile recycling also ensures that the fibresthat are not available locally can be converted into usable form again and thecost of transportation to get the fibres from other parts of the country orworld is cut down. The recycled textile material is not re-dyed or polishedthus saving the energy further. The water wastage is put under control as therecycled textile does not need to be washed thoroughly with large volumes ofwater as it is done in case of virgin fibre.

Among some of the disadvantages associated with therecycled textile is the cost of production and the overall cost of the finalproduct. Some recycled textile products are ranged in higher prices than theirconventional counterparts. This to an extent is because recycling has still notbeen fully accepted by many consumers, so supply of recycled materials islimited but the practice is gaining momentum. However, recycling also tends touse cleaner and more efficient processes. The burden of the increased cost canbe eased by the fact that there are long-term benefits of recycled textiles andit results in a cleaner, healthier world with abundant natural resources.Another setback with recycling is that the process can become extremelycomplicated in case of blended fabrics.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the global textileindustries can do without recycling. In some of the developed countries likethe United Kingdom, almost ninety percent clothes are imported and this alsoincludes luxury brands. The shelf life of garments is limited and on an averagea single garment is used for not more than three years. U.K. buys 2,066,000tonnes of clothes each year and an astonishing 52 percent or 1,081,000 tonne isthrown away in landfill. Thus, here the textile waste material industry isdoing a good business and also saving the environment. Countries like theU.S.A., Germany and France also are increasingly recycling the textile waste.

As per the figures released by the Council for TextileRecycling, textile recycling industry in the U.S.A. inhibits 2.5 billion poundsof post-consumer textile waste from going into the solid waste stream everyyear. In the U.S.A. alone, the collecting agencies collect 500 million poundsof textiles. Some of it is sold to textile recyclers. Nearly half of theleftover textiles are distributed to charities that either give away clothes orsell them at discounted prices in second-hand stores. Approximately 61 percentof the clothes recovered for second-hand use are exported to other countries.

 

The aim of recycling textile waste is to create a healthyenvironment. Also a systematic collection, sorting, re-use and recycling systemsignifies establishment of a new industry involving voluntary and commercialorganisation. This generates employment and results in economic growth. Anincreased use of recycled textiles can also develop the second-hand market.Textile waste recycling is a cost-saving avenue for the manufacturers and fromthe perspective of an end-users, it can be a convenient way to contribute to earth'ssafety.

References:

1. Teonline.com

2. Portal.Hamk.fi

3. Textileworld.com

 

Image Courtesy:

1.Waste-management-world.com