When we talk about textile product made of recycle fibre we gets two types of thought in our mind.

Is it made of used garments fibre or used items?

Is it made of used from textile industry waste?

First and most important thing is to understand

1.0 “What is the Recycling “

Recycling is a key concept of modern waste management. Recycling is the reprocessing of waste materials into new or reusable products. Ninety-nine percent of used textiles or textiles waste are recyclable.

2.0 Most Common fibre used in Textile Industry.

Cotton is the most used natural fibre and Polyester is the most used man-made fibre or synthetic fibre in the textile industry.

3.0 Why do we need Recycling of Textile Fibre?

We are living in the fashion environment. It is not limited to cloths, we use lot of plastic for the daily usage also. If we can count the number of garment being manufactured per year or number of plastic bottle packed per year, it will be great achievement of mathematician. And this number will grow with the time and population.

4.0 Where all these things goes?

After use we through the items on the ground, and ultimately we leaves these things to be biodegrade. Coming back to textile fabric, the research has shown that after 243 days, cotton had 76% degradation while the polyester fibres showed 4% degradation, which means cotton degrades 95% more than polyester in wastewater. The research further shows that cotton will continue to degrade over time, unlike polyester whose degradation plateaued after the time tested.

It means we are destroying the environment, and it will continue if we do not start recycle or reuse of the waste items. Recycling and reusing textiles, fibres and waste materials is an effective method to build sustainability in the apparel industry a report by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that textiles are an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. In order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, efforts are made to increase textile recycling. In the current scenario, recycling clothing would have an effect equivalent to removing one million cars off the road every year.

Textiles thrown into the landfills have become a big global problem. Natural fibres take years to decompose, whereas man-made fibres do not decompose. Woollen clothes do decompose, but release methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This contributes towards global warming. Synthetic fabrics in the landfill release nitrous oxide which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Besides, toxic substances pollute groundwater and surrounding soil.

In order to curb the growth of textile waste, textile recycling is the only option. Moreover, textile recycling offers many environmental benefits. It decreases the need for landfill space, keeping in mind the greenhouse gases released from the textiles dumped. In addition, the area surrounding the landfill poses risk to the groundwater. Every time it rains, the water absorbs all the chemicals and toxic materials from whatever is dumped in the landfill such as chemicals, dyes and bleaches used on textiles.

This water gets collected at the bottom of the landfill, which can be 200 times more toxic than the sewage water. By re-using the existing fibres and textiles, it reduces the need for newly manufactured fibres. This saves water, energy, dyes and chemicals, which results into less pollution.

So let’s redefine the textile waste and its usage to make it sustainable

5. Types of Textile Waste

Textile waste can be classified as either

 Pre-consumer waste

Postconsumer waste

Pre consumer waste consists of by-product materials from the textile fibre, and cotton industries that are re-manufactured for the automotive, aeronautic, home building, furniture, mattress, coarse yarn, home furnishings, paper, apparel and other industries.

Postconsumer waste is defined as any type of garment or household article made from manufactured textiles that the owner no longer needs and decides to discard. These articles are discarded either because they are worn out, damaged, outgrown, or have gone out of fashion.

6. Waste Management

In general, there are four ways of handling the waste. In order of priority

1 Source Reduction

2 Incineration

3 Land Fills

4 Recycling

Out of these recycling most advantageous method to make it sustainable

7. Advantages of Recycling

Reducing environmental load through the efficient use of resources, energy and the recycling of used products.

Recycling include petroleum savings, greenhouse gases reduced, energy conserved.

Reduces the need for landfill space.

Reduces pressure on virgin resources.

Results in less pollution and energy savings, as fibres do not have to be transported.

8. Recycling Technology

The recycling of resources can be broadly divided into thermal, material and chemical sectors. In the fibre and textile industry, thermal recycling is intended to recover heat energy generated from the incineration of fibre wastes as thermal or electrical energy. Material recycling recovers polymers from fibres or plastics, and at present, the idea of transforming polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into fibres is most economical and widely used for practical purposes. Chemical recycling recovers monomers from waste fibres by polymer decomposition. Impurities can be easily removed from recovered monomers, so their quality will be made exactly equal to virgin monomers.

Recycling of cotton Fibre

Pre consumed cotton waste we get from the textile industry in the form of noil in spinning, in the form of fly waste in knitting and weaving sector, and cutting waste in the garment industry. All these can be used to reproduce textile products.

In recycling of any product main important step is segregation. If we have segregated waste at the source, the waste seller will get more money also,

In segregation what is the need of the industry?

In spinning us need noil packed properly so that it can use in the cotton mattress or in the rugs manufacturing. With non-woven method.

In Garment industry if the waste is segregated dyed and white separately, the end use become more specific.

White cutting waste goes to medical industry also.

These waste is being converted in to fibre, and then used to form the yarn.

Recycle Cotton yarn has less strength, due to short staple length. Hence it is used for the home furnishing more.

Recycling of Polyester

Polyester Recycling has become most favourable now a days. It is due to its strength also.

Like traditional polyester, recycled polyester is a man-made fabric produced from synthetic fibres. However, instead of utilizing new materials to craft the fabric (i.e. petroleum), recycled polyester makes use of existing plastic. In many cases, those existing plastics are your old water bottles.

• Why Choose Recycled Polyester?

This soft yet tough fabric is a more sustainable option than its conventional counterpart, but maintains all the properties that made polyester so popular since its inception in the ‘40s. From saving water bottles from a life in a landfill to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a go-to for goods that require high performance durability. Take a look at the finished product with some of our favorite recycled polyester picks below